INNEX 


v  Of 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


a,* 


/v4-c^^. 


LECTURES 


ox 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE 


BY 

MAURICE  FRANCIS  EGAN,  LLD., 

LATB     EDITOR     OF     THE     NEW     YORK     FREEMAN'S     JOURNAL,     AND     PROFESSOR     OF 
ENGLISH    LITERATURB    IN   THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   NOTRE    DAME. 


NEW  YORK: 
WILLIAM    H.    SADLIER, 

ii   BARCLAY  STREET. 


COPYRIGHTED,  1889, 
BY  WILLIAM   H.  SADLIER. 


DEDICATION 

TO  THE  PUPILS,   PAST  AND  PRESENT, 

OF  CATHOLIC  COLLEGES   AND   SCHOOLS 

IN   THE   UNITED  STATES, 
THIS  BOOK  IS  AFFECTIONA  TEL  Y  DEDICA  TED. 


COPYRIGHTED,  1889, 
BY  WILLIAM   H.  SADLIER. 


DEDICATION 

TO  THE  PUPILS,  PAST  AND  PRESENT, 

OF   CATHOLIC  COLLEGES   AND   SCHOOLS 

IN   THE   UNITED  STATES, 
77/75  BOOK  IS  AFFECTIONA  TEL  Y  DEDICA  TED. 


CONTENTS. 


LECTURE   I. 

PACK 

Literature  as  a  Factor  in  Life, i 


LECTURE   II. 

Chaucer :   Some  Glimpses  of  his  Time,  his  Life  and  his 

Friends,    .........          22 

LECTURE    III. 
The  Real  Meaning  of  /Esthetics, 41 

LECTURE    IV. 
Southwell,  Crashaw,  and  Habington,      .        .        .        .          61 

LECTURE   V. 
An  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Tennyson,     ...          88 

LECTURE   VI. 
Two  Dramas  by  Tennyson  and  Aubrey  De  Vere,          .        no 

LECTURE  VII. 
Some  Women  Writers 132 

LECTURE   VIII. 
Literature  and  Manners, 164 


LECTURE  I. 

LITERATURE  AS  A  FACTOR  IN  LIFE. 

THERE  are  two  extremes  from  which  Literature  is  re- 
garded in  these  days.  From  one  point  of  view  it  is  looked 
on  as  the  only  thing  in  life  worth  living  for;  from  the 
other,  as  a  mere  ornament,  a  distraction, — an  amusement 
for  an  idle  hour. 

The  disciples  of  what  is  called  Culture, — a  term  which 
like  the  adjective  asthetic  has  suffered  grievously  by  mis- 
use,— place  Literature  above  Dogma.  That  is,  they  hold 
that  a  human  being  may  be  able  to  get  enough  vital  con- 
solation out  of  books  to  do  entirely  without  the  teachings 
of  the  Christian  religion.  Blasphemously  they  group  the 
sacred  Scriptures,  the  Koran,  the  Buddhistic  writings  to- 
gether as  great  works  of  literature.  Thomas  a  Kempis 
and  the  author  of  "Paul  and  Virginia,"  St.  Paul  and 
George  Eliot  we  find  jumbled  together  by  the  cultured, — 
with  a  capital  C — who  recommend  books  to  the  "  masses." 

Matthew  Arnold's  name  is  known  to  all  of  you.  He 
died  recently.  He  did  more  to  inculcate  in  the  minds  of 
English-speaking  people  a  love  for  Literature  for  the  sake 
of  itself  than  any  other  man  living  or  dead.  He  was  a  poet, 
but  not  a  great  one.  He  cultivated  the  art  of  using  words 


2  LITERATURE  AS  A    FACTOR  IN  LIFE. 

to  the  utmost  extent  possible  in  a  man  of  his  temperament. 
He  wrote  at  times  exquisitely.  He  was  an  intellectual 
aristocrat,  and  we  cannot  but  admire  the  position  he  took 
above  all  low,  vulgar  and  common  things.  But,  neverthe- 
less, his  life-long  cultivation  of  the  art  of  literature  led  to 
nothing,  because  it  did  not  lead  to  God.  Literature  is  a 
factor  in  life,  and  an  important  one  in  all  well-regulated 
lives,  but  it  is  not  the  end  of  life.  God  is  the  beginning 
and  the  end. 

The  effect  of  Matthew  Arnold's  teachings  may  be  traced 
in  a  recent  popular  novel,  "  Robert  Elsmere."  The  author 
of  it  is  Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward.  It  has  succeeded  Rider 
Haggard's  "  She "  and  Robert  Stevenson's  "  Dr.  Jekyll 
and  Mr.  Hyde  "  in  the  estimation  of  the  thoughtless  reader. 
Why  ?  Because  Mr.  Gladstone  reviewed  it  in  The  Nine- 
teenth Century.  There  is  no  getting  over  the  fact  that 
English  opinion  still  sways  our  judgment  in  literary  mat- 
ters, although  the  West  is  more  independent  and  Ameri- 
can in  this  respect  than  the  East. 

This  winter  "  Robert  Elsmere  "  has  become  the  talk  of 
all  the  drawing-rooms.  Ladies  who  read  it  because  it  is 
the  fashion  speak  learnedly  about  the  impregnable  posi- 
tion that  Theistic  teaching  holds  in  the  world  of  science. 
I  heard  one  the  other  day,  and  I  asked,  as  politely  as  possi- 
ble, what  she  meant.  She  did  not  answer;  but  I  knew 
she  had  been  reading  "  Robert  Elsmere."  Next  summer 
when  you  are  in  the  country,  at  the  watering  places,  or  at 
home,  you  will  find  the  ladies,  old  and  young,  discussing 
"  Robert  Elsmere,"  and  probably  some  of  you  will  read  it 


LITERATURE  AS  A    FACTOR  J.V  LIFE.  3 

yourselves.  Therefore,  as  this  book  is  to-day,  and  will 
perhaps  be  to-morrow,  a  topic  of  general  discussion,  I  am 
glad  to  have  the  opportunity  of  warning  you  against  its 
tendency.  It  is  not  immoral,  as  one  late  notorious  story 
by  a  woman  is  immoral.  But  it  is  immoral  in  an  intel- 
lectual sense.  It  is  false,  because  the  author  pretends  to 
a  first-hand  knowledge  of  things  which  she  has  evidently 
taken  at  second-hand.  And  all  pretence  in  large  or  small 
things  is  more  or  less  immoral. 

"  Robert  Elsmere,"  as  I  said,  is  the  result  of  that 
theory  of  life  which  makes  Literature  the  end,  the  sup- 
port, the  consolation  of  life.  This  was  Matthew  Arnold's 
theory;  this  is  the  theory  of  those  of  his  cult  who  substi- 
tute culture  for  faith  and  lucidity,  sweetness  and  light, — 
which  words  are  the  slang  of  culture, — for  the  Gifts  of  the 
Holy  Ghost.  This  novel  teaches  that  through  the  in- 
creased keenness  which  the  study  of  Literature  has  given 
us,  we  may  pierce  the  past,  and,  by  the  light  of  our  study 
of  literature,  discover  that  the  teachings  of  Christianity 
have  been  mistaken  from  the  beginning,  and  that  our 
Lord  was  only  man,  not  God;  and  that  God  Himself  is 
only  a  mere  vague  name ! 

This  is  the  result  of  that  devotion  to  culture  which 
Matthew  Arnold  considered  the  best  thing  in  life,  and  the 
result  of  his  belief  that  religion  and  science  might  fail, 
but  that  poetry,  as  the  consoler  and  the  elevator  of  man, 
could  never  fail.  This  is  the  teaching  of  a  novel  which  is 
read  to-day  by  every  half-educated  man  and  woman  in 
this  country  of  half -education. 


4  LITERATURE  AS  A   FACTOR  IN  LIFE. 

You  see  that,  since  Literature  has  such  an  influence  in 
moulding  the  ideas  of  men  and  women,  even  concerning 
the  beginning  and  the  end  of  all  things,  it  is  a  very  im- 
portant factor  in  life.  There  are  intellectual  people,  like 
Matthew  Arnold,  among  men,  and  among  women,  like 
Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward  and  Vernon  Lee,  who  overrate  the 
value  of  Literature  and  who  put  it  in  place  of  religion. 

"  No  young  man,"  says  our  old  friend,  the  estimable 
Duke  of  Omnium,  in  Anthony  Trollope's  novel,  "should 
dare  to  neglect  literature.  At  some  period  of  his  life  he 
will  surely  need  consolation ;  and  he  may  be  certain  that, 
should  he  live  to  be  an  old  man,  there  will  be  none  other, 
except  religion."  The  Duke  of  Omnium,  however,  is  not 
of  our  time ;  it  is  not  strange  that  he  is  puzzled  and  be- 
wildered by  the  breadth  of  view  which  permits  agnosticism 
as  a  decoration  to  the  real  business  of  life — enjoyment — 
and  denies  none  of  the  pleasant  vices  to  exalted  gentle- 
men, or  none  of  the  picturesque  frailties  to  no  less  exalted 
ladies.  Were  the  worthy  duke  abreast  of  the  age,  he 
would  not  except  religion,  for  it  has  become  an  axiom 
with  the  most  exact  thinkers  that  culture  is  the  highest 
and  best  thing  in  life;  and  what  is  culture,  judged  by 
their  standard,  but  the  art  of  reading  in  perfection  ? 
Matthew  Arnold  comes  as  near  blasphemy  as  any  man 
can  in  this  period,  in  which  the  saying  of  smart  things 
about  the  Creator  has  come  to  be  regarded  as  a  mark  of 
much  wit,  when  he  places  poetry  even  above  science  as 
the  consoler  of  men. 

"  Without  poetry,"  he  asserts  in  a  preface  to  Thomas  Humphrey 
Ward's  admirable  work,  The  English  Poets — which  is  the  text  of 


LITERATURE  AS  A    FACTOR  IN  LIFE,  5 

this  article, — "without  poetry  our  science  would  appear  incomplete; 
and  most  of  what  now  passes  with  us  for  religion  and  philosophy  will 
be  replaced  by  poetry.  Science,  I  say,  will  appear  incomplete  with- 
out it.  For  finely  and  truly  does  Wordsworth  call  poetry  '  the  im- 
passioned expression  which  is  in  the  countenance  of  all  science';  and 
what  is  a  countenance  without  its  expression  ?  Again,  Wordsworth 
finely  and  truly  calls  poetry  '  the  breath  and  finer  spirit  of  all  knowl- 
edge. '  Our  religion  parading  evidences  such  as  those  on  which  the 
popular  mind  relies  now  ;  our  philosophy  pluming  itself  on  its  reason- 
ings about  causation  and  finite  and  infinite  being — what  are  they  but 
the  shadows  and  dreams  and  false  shows  of  knowledge  ?  The  day 
will  come  when  we  shall  wonder  at  ourselves  for  having  trusted 
them,  for  having  taken  them  seriously ;  and  the  more  we  perceive 
their  hollowness,  the  more  we  shall  prize  '  the  breath-  and  finer  spirit 
of  knowledge  offered  its  by  poetry.'  " 

The  day  has  come  when  men,  reared  among  the  shams 
of  Protest,  have  turned  away  from  the  weak  support  of  an 
emasculated  religion  to  seek  rest  in  a  philosophy  which 
offers  no  certitude,  and  in  a  science  which  is  only  half 
understood.  They  stretch  out  their  hands  for  bread,  and 
the  priests  of  culture  give  them  a  stone. 

Poetry,  exalted,  God-inspired  as  it  is,  interpreter  as  it 
is  of  the  voiceless  messages  that  man  and  nature  hold  for 
each  other,  fails  when  we  go  to  it  for  that  consolation 
which  all  men  crave  some  time  or  other,  and  without  which 
the  highest  attainment  is  valueless — that  consolation  which 
the  soul  craves,  and  craves  more  strongly,  when  it  has 
conquered  the  intellectual  world  and  reached  its  ultima 
thule  of  culture.  At  a  certain  time  in  his  life  the  French 
poet,  Maurice  de  Guerin,  found  what  he  deemed  consola- 
tion in  resting  against  the  trunk  of  a  lilac  in  his  garden, 
"  le  seul  etre  au  monde  centre  qui  il  put  appuyer  sa  chan- 
celante  nature,  comme  le  seul  capable  de  supporter  son 


6  LITERATURE  AS  A   FACTOR  IN  LIFE. 

embrassement,"  in  the  struggle  between  pantheism  and 
faith  that  was  going  on  in  his  soul.  Poetry  must  fail  those 
who  go  to  it  as  a  last  resource,  as  the  lilac  failed  De 
Guerin.  It  is  the  experience  of  men  in  all  ages  that 
hearts  only  can  comfort  hearts;  that  the  purest  abstrac- 
tions are  cold  and  unsatisfactory.  Humanity  that  can 
console  humanity  must  be,  itself,  yet  higher  than  itself. 
The  Church  offers,  not  poetry,  but  the  Sacred  Heart. 

Goethe  did  not  find  consolation  in  poetry  or  the  highest 
flights  of  his  intellect,  and  Matthew  Arnold,  the  most  pol- 
ished and  complaisant  of  the  priests  of  culture,  is  not,  it 
would  seem,  free  from  that  divine  despair  in  which  we 
may  imagine  Sappho  looking  from  her  rock.  Poetry  is 
a  seraph  on  whom  the  light  of  God  falls,  but  poetry  is  not 
God.  Poetry  may  bear  the  soul  to  supernal  flights,  but  it 
cannot  give  rest,  serenity,  hope,  which  make  consolation. 
It  ever  asks  that  "  Why  ?  "  to  which  religion  gives  an 
eternal  answer. 

The  Scriptures  contain  great  poems — the  greatest 
poems;  but  he  who,  reading  them,  tries  to  eliminate  the 
Godhead  of  Christ  loses  himself  in  what  Ruskin  calls  the 
verde  smalto — the  helpless  green  of  the  Elysian  Fields. 
Homer,  cold  and  joyless,  offers  no  consolation;  Horace 
and  Theocritus  are  without  joy  in  their  verde  smalto. 
Roses  and  wine  soon  lose  their  savor,  and  the  cicada  is 
only  harsh  when  the  heart  is  sad.  Christianity  gave  to 
poetry  all  its  joyousness,  all  that  sympathy  with  men  and 
nature  which  makes  us  glad.  Poetry  no  longer  echoes 
the  sea-like  moan  of  restless  souls,  as  in  Homer;  it  inter- 


LITERATURE  AS  A    FACTOR  IN  LIFE.  7 

piets  and  elevates,  as  in  Dante.  It  is  impossible  to  divorce 
Christianity  from  the  poetry  that  is  nearest  to  us.  Chris- 
tianity has  made  it  what  it  is.  It  was  not  till  after  the 
Resurrection  that  the  spring  clothed  itself  in  gladness. 
The  rain  came  and  departed,  and  the  voice  of  the  turtle 
was  heard  in  the  land ;  but  the  full  glory  and  gladness  of 
the  spring  did  not  make  itself  known  to  the  human  heart 
until  after  the  first  Easter.  Who,  going  to  Shakspeare  for 
consolation,  is  not  referred  to  Him  who  is  beyond  ?  And 
where  is  the  sublimity  of  Dante  without  the  Divine  Per- 
sons from  whom  that  sublimity  radiates  ?  Such  poets  as 
Swinburne  and  Gautier  cannot  escape  from  the  light  of 
the  cross.  Their  paganism  is  not  the  paganism  of  the 
Greeks ;  they  cannot  bridge  over  the  stream  that  flowed 
from  Calvary.  The  light  deepens  their  shadows.  Their 
effects  are  in  chiaro-oscuro,  and  this  has  given  them  that 
vogue  for  which  they  sacrificed  so  much. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  many, — the  vast  majority 
in  fact, — who  look  on  Literature  as  only  an  ornament  of 
life, — a  polite  accomplishment,  or  the  amusement  of  an 
idle  hour.  Among  these  I  am  forced  to  class  a  great 
number  of  young  women.  And,  referring  to  them,  I 
should  say  idle  hours  rather  than  an  idle  hour.  For  of 
those  who  regard  Literature  only  as  a  diversion,  the 
greatest  number  read  novels.  I  must  elaborate  this  as- 
sertion still  further  and  say  devour,  instead  of  read. 

If  you  have  ever  had  the  opportunity  of  seeing  certain 
people,  who  have  only  five  minutes  for  refreshments,  try- 
ing to  lunch  at  a  railroad  station  while  the  train  is  waiting, 


8  LITERATURE  AS  A   FACTOR  IN  LIFE. 

you  have  an  impression  of  how  the  young  woman  who  is 
devoted  to  novels  takes  her  mental  food.  Once,  far  down 
in  Texas,  I  had  the  fortune  to  witness  a  process  of  this 
kind.  The  traveller, — a  hungry  one, — made  a  dash  at  the 
pickles  because  they  were  nearest.  Then  he  crunched 
until  a  bilious-looking  mince-meat  pie  caught  his  glare. 
He  bolted  the  pie  and  then  swallowed  a  plate  of  pork  and 
beans.  He  was  stuffing  a  ham  sandwich  into  his  mouth 
when  the  bell  rang  and,  I  feel  sure,  he  was  saved  from 
sudden  death. 

The  reader  who  looks  on  Literature  as  mere  amusement 
generally  acquires  the  habit  of  bolting  novels  as  this 
traveller  devoured  his  food.  I  have  met  young  ladies  who 
claimed  to  have  read  ten  novels  in  a  week!  They,  when 
cross-examined  as  politely  as  possible,  acknowledged  that 
they  did  not  remember  the  characters  in  any  of  them. 
They  had  a  dim  impression  that  Lady  De  Vere  had  mar- 
ried the  Duke  of  Something-or-Other :  but  whether  Ange- 
lina, the  heroine  of  "  Wedded  on  a  Fatal  Night,"  was  a 
creation  of  "  The  Duchess's  "  or  "  Ouida's  "  or  "  Bertha  M. 
Clay's,"  they  really  did  not  know.  One  young  girl  had, — 
she  confessed  without  apparent  shame,- — read  six  of  "  The 
Duchess's"  novels  in  one  week  and  was  looking  for  more! 
This  was  during  the  vacation  time.  And  the  week  after 
this,  I  saw  her  sitting  on  a  piazza  at  Long  Branch,  with  one 
of  Rhoda  Broughton's  near  her,  just  finished,  Haggard's 
"  She  "  and  an  utterly  wretched  work  called  "  Miss  Middle- 
ton's  Lover."  Her  mother  did  not  seem  to  mind  it.  But 
I  think  that  both  mother  and  daughter  were  to  be  pitied. 


LITERATURE  ASA    FACTOR  IN  LIFE.  9 

The  reading  of  novels, — and  worse  than  worthless 
novels, — was  this  young  woman's  way  of  making  use  of 
Literature.  If  she  were  told  that  she  was  as  absurd  a 
figure  as  the  man  who  munches  pie  and  pickles,  pork  and 
beans  and  oysters  at  the  same  time,  she  would  be  indig- 
nant, and  yet  she  does  a  similar  thing  without  a  similar 
excuse.  The  novels  of  "  The  Duchess  "  are  like  a  very 
light  kind  of  confection  with  a  drop  of  poison  here  and 
there  in  it  and  a  great  deal  of  opium  well  disguised  by  the 
experienced  cook. 

If  there  were  no  harm  in  them,  these  novels  would  be 
as  unhealthy  as  a  constant  diet  of  pies  and  caramels  and 
pickles  would  be. 

Physical  food  is  a  great  factor  in  life,  so  is  mental  food. 
The  mental  system  is  as  capable  of  derangement  through 
bad  mental  food  as  the  physical  system.  Let  anybody 
who  doubts  this,  analyze  his  or  her  state  of  mind  after  the 
reading  of  a  carelessly  written  sensational  novel.  It  leaves 
him  in  a  dream.  It  has  paralyzed  his  powers  of  thinking 
and  acting.  It  leaves  in  him  a  distaste  for  more  solid 
mental  food.  The  inveterate  novel-reader  cannot  be  in- 
duced to  read  history,  a  volume  of  fine  essays,  and  a  book 
of  devotions  is  impossible  to  him.  He  has  created  a 
false  appetite.  He  will  henceforth  have  only  condiments. 
He  will  take  the  horse-radish,  but  not  the  roast  beef;  the 
mustard,  but  not  the  cold  ham ;  and  the  cranberry  sauce, 
but  not  the  turkey. 

Short  novels  are  only  condiments,  or  bits  of  orna- 
mental confectionery  which  are  as  fatal  to  the  machinery 


10  LITERATURE  AS  A    FACTOR  IN  LIFE. 

of  the  mind,  when  habitually  used,  as  caramels  and  nougat 
would  be  to  the  machinery  of  the  body,  if  they  were  in- 
dulged in  as  a  steady  diet.  Thackeray,  one  of  the  greatest 
of  English  novelists,  was  once  asked  if  he  had  read  a  cer- 
tain new  book, — "  I  bake  cakes,"  he  said,  "  but  I  eat 
bread." 

You  can  easily  prove  to  yourselves  the  truth  of  what  I 
say.  Can  any  of  you  read  "  Ben  Hur,"  or  "  Dion  and  the 
Sibyls,"  or  "  Fabiola,"  without  experiencing  an  exhilara- 
tion of  good  purpose  ?  One  must  be  very  impassable — 
very  void  of  fine  feelings, — if  one  does  not  have  all  good 
resolves  helped  by  such  books.  After  reading  such  books 
it  seems  easy  to  suffer  and  to  die  for  the  right.  And  if 
the  young  man  must  dream,  let  him  dream  that  h«  is 
Pancratius  or  Ben  Hur, — let  the  young  girl  dream  that  she 
is  Fabiola  or  Esther.  And  yet  dreams  are  dangerous. 
They  may  become  our  masters  before  we  know  it.  If  we 
dream  great  things,  we  may  realize  them,  but  they  must 
be  things  that  strengthen  and  elevate  our  minds.  It  is 
only  by  strengthening  the  good  in  us  that  we  can  grow 
into  our  best  selves.  Literature  is  such  a  strong  factor  in 
life  because  its  influence  works  in  us  unconsciously  to 
ourselves.  If  we  only  knew  how  much  our  actions  in 
supreme  moments  of  life,— in  times  of  crisis — depend  on 
the  little  thoughts  and  acts  that  preceded  them,  we  should 
keep  vigilant  watch  on  the  little  foxes  that  make  way 
through  the  gaps  in  our  hedges.  It  is  the  carelessness  of 
venial  sins  that  make  mortal  sins  easy.  We,  in  this  world, 
are  like  the  violins  in  a  great  orchestra.  If  we  are  not 


LITERATURE  AS  A    FACTOR  7Ar  LIFE.  n 

kept  in  tune,  we  lose  in  fineness  of  quality  and,  when  the 
Great  Leader  of  this  wonderous  earthly  orchestra  waves 
His  baton,  we  are  found  wanting ;  we  make  discord.  To 
be  at  our  best  always,  we  must  keep  ourselves  in  tune  with 
the  best  of  the  instruments  near  us.  And  the  best  of  these 
instruments  are  good  books. 

They  are  true  friends.  We  can  always  have  them  with 
us.  As  a  clear-sighted  writer  says,  they  never  take  offence, 
they  never  betray  our  confidence,  they  are  ready  to  coun- 
sel, to  interest  us  at  any  moment.  They  have  no  moods. 
A  word  from  them  often  falls  into  our  minds  like  a  stone 
into  a  clear  pool.  It  makes  ripples  that  reflect  in  prisma- 
tic hues  the  face  and  the  sun  of  heaven.  No ;  we  must 
not  underrate  the  influence  of  books.  And  in  these  days 
when  it  is  truer  than  it  was  in  Solomon's  time,  that  of 
the  making  of  books  there  is  no  end,  we  must  be  careful 
how  we  choose  our  books.  Bad  books  have  ruined  as 
many  men  as  bad  whiskey,  and  sentimental  love  stories 
have  made  as  many  women  useless  and  unworthy  of  their 
high  destiny  as  evil  companions.  The  mission  of  women 
is  the  highest  mission  on  earth.  When  God  sent  His  Son 
on  earth  He  intrusted  Him  to  the  care  of  her — the  Virgin 
— blessed  among  women.  Women,  as  mothers,  as  teachers, 
by  precept,  by  example,  rule  the  world.  Therefore,  they 
owe  to  themselves,  to  society,  to  God,  to  make  themselves 
worthy  of  their  vocation. 

There  have  been  women,  like  George  Eliot  and  George 
Sand,  who  held  Literature  to  be  the  best  thing  in  life. 
There  is  a  woman  writing  to-day  who  holds  the  same 


12  LITERATURE  AS  A   FACTOR  IN  LIFE. 

opinion.  Her  name  is  Vernon  Lee,  and  all  her  knowledge 
and  all  her  literary  skill  are  wielded  against  God.  The 
life  of  George  Eliot  shows  that  genius  and  the  finest  lit- 
erary skill  cannot  compensate  for  the  loss  of  God  as  re- 
vealed by  Himself.  Her  life  was  sad,  as  you  can  see  by 
the  letters  which  her  husband,  Mr.  Cross,  has  left  us. 
Practically  rejecting  Christianity,  she  committed  a  breach 
of  morality  for  which  her  greatest  admirers  dare  not  apol- 
ogize. You  see  that  Literature  without  God  does  not 
make  men  and  women  virtuous.  For  without  God  it  is 
only  part  of  itself.  Cardinal  Newman  well  says  that  a 
university  without  a  Chair  of  Theology  is  incomplete.  It 
is  so  with  Literature.  Literature  without  Christ  is  futile. 
So  futile  is  it,  that  all  poets  since  the  time  of  Augustus 
are,  in  spite  of  themselves,  Christian  in  their  best  moments. 

Even  George  Eliot  could  not  escape  the  charm  of  St. 
Teresa.  Her  imagination  clung  to  the  proud  figure  of 
Savonarola,  though  I  could  not  advise  you  to  take  her 
view  of  that  great  monk's  character,  or  of  Charles  Kings- 
ley's  Cyril,  in  his  novel  of  "  Hypatia."  She  made  a  noble 
picture  of  Florence.  And,  in  "  Daniel  Deronda,"  a  fine 
defence  of  the  Jews.  That,  I  think,  was  the  most  Christian 
thing  she  ever  did.  For  we  owe  our  morality,  our  Chris- 
tianity itself  to  Hebrews,  as  well  as  the  highest  literature 
we  have,  the  sacred  Scriptures.  It  was  a  Christian  act  to 
recall  this,  and  Christians  are  unworthy  of  the  name  who 
are  not  willing  to  acknowledge  their  obligation  to  that 
grand  old  race. 

Some  of  you  may  say  that  you  cannot  read  Dante ;  that 


LITERATURE  AS  A    FACTOR  IX  LIFE.  13 

Shakspeare  is  too  heavy;  that  Milton  seems  like  a  task; 
that  even  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield  and  Rasselas  tire  you. 
Then  I  say  that  you  are  a  bad  case  of  mental  dyspepsia. 
You  must  take  a  course  of  reading  which  will  be  a  tonic ; 
but  for  very  shame  you  must  learn  to  like  good  books. 

When  I  see,  in  the  street  cars  of  a  large  city,  working 
girls  going  home  at  night,  each  carrying  her  luncheon- 
box  and  a  paper-covered  novel,  when  this  novel  is  usually 
"  Molly  Bawn,"  or  the  "  Fatal  Wedding,"  by  Mrs.  E.  D. 
E.  N.  Southworth,  or  "  Miss  Middleton's  Lover,"  by  that 
trashiest  of  all  story-writers,  Miss  Mary  Jane  Libby,  I  can 
find  much  excuse  for  them.  They  have  worked  hard  all 
their  lives.  They  have  had  no  chance  to  know  better. 
Their  taste  for  good  books  has  never  been  cultivated.  At 
best,  they  have  gabbled  through  the  perfunctory  lessons 
of  a  public  school,  and  completed  their  education  by  the 
reading  of  the  newspapers,  and  taken  a  post-graduate 
course  with  the  assistance  of  "  The  Duchess,"  "  Ouida," 
and  Bertha  M.  Clay. 

Are  we  to  tolerate  this  kind  of  reading  among  young 
gentlewomen,  who  have  every  advantage  of  education  and 
culture  ?  If  they  leave  school  without  a  taste  for  good 
books,  "  classic  books,"  your  education  has  been  a  partial 
failure.  It  is  your  mission  to  lead,  not  to  follow, — to  set 
an  example  of  the  cultivation  and  grace  which  should  be- 
long to  a  gentlewoman  in  these  days.  And  every  year  the 
world  is  becoming  more  exacting.  We,  in  America,  are 
passing  beyond  the  brick  and  mortar  epoch;  we  are  be- 
coming more  highly  civilized  and  more  exacting.  Men 


I4  LITERATURE  AS  A    FACTOR  IN  LIFE. 

are  no  longer  satisfied  with  ignorance  and  a  brownstone 
house,  nor  with  bad  pictures  in  rich  gold  frames,  nor  with 
carved  book-cases  and  nothing  in  them.  Similarly,  they 
judge  education  by  a  higher  standard.  And,  as  you  grow 
older,  young  ladies,  you  will  find  that  a  mere  smattering  of 
literature  will  satisfy  neither  yourself  nor  your  friends. 
"To  ask  a  man  or  woman,"  says  Frederick  Harrison, 
"who  spends  half  a  life-time  in  sucking  magazines  and 
new  poems,  to  read  a  book  of  Homer  would  be  like  ask- 
ing a  butcher's  boy  to  whistle  the  'Adelaide.' ''  This  is 
true ;  transient,  periodical  literature  is  a  bane  of  our  civili- 
zation. Now,  I  suppose  you  may  consider  me  snobbish 
for  introducing  Mr.  Harrison's  butcher  boy.  You  may 
say  why  should  not  a  butcher  boy  whistle  the  Adelaide? 
Well,  there  is  no  law  against  it.  And  if  the  butcher  boy 
is  virtuous  and  cultivated,  he  is  as  good  a  gentleman  as 
anybody  in  the  land.  There  is  no  aristocracy,  except  the 
aristocracy  of  virtue  and  cultivation.  As  Tennyson  says, 

4  'Tis  only  noble  to  be  good." 

But,  remember,  that  one  must  in  this  country  be  edu- 
cated as  well  as  good.  You  may  be  descended  from  all 
the  kings  on  earth,  you  may  be  rich  and  "  prominent,"  and 
be  everything  that  answers  for  rank  in  this  country;  but 
without  cultivation, — which  presupposes  a  taste  for  and  a 
knowledge  of  Literature, — you  can  never  be  gentlewomen. 
We  may  say  what  we  please ;  we  may  hunt  up  our  coats 
of  arms  and  our  crests,  and  our  cousins  may  even  marry 
foreign  titles ;  but,  in  our  hearts,  we  know  it  is  all  a  sham. 
In  this  country,  the  only  aristocracy  is  that  of  the  heart  and 


LITERATURE  AS  A   FACTOR  IN  LIFE.  15 

the  head, — of  character  and  acquirements.  We  cannot 
make  it  otherwise,  unless  we  make  the  country  over  again, 
and  blot  out  the  Declaration  of  Independence. 

People  who  read  only  the  lower  books  acquire  false- 
ideas  of  life.  And  as  most  of  these  lower  books  are  re- 
prints of  worthless  English  novels,  we  find  that  our  young 
people  found  their  ideas  of  life  on  the  English  plan.  They 
know  all  about  vicars  and  squires  and  young  curates  who 
play  lawn  tennis;  they  tremble  with  delight  when  the 
heroine  refuses  a  baronet  and  accepts  a  duke.  They 
learn  to  love  a  title,  and  they  dream  of  a  time,  when,  en- 
tering society  in  a  new  gown  made  by  Madame  Elise  or 
Worth,  the  music  stops,  for  the  musicians  are  so  charmed 
by  their  beauty  that  they  cannot  play.  And  then  the 
young  duke  or  the  young  lord  asks  them  to  dance  and 
they  float  away,  etc.,  etc. 

"  They  live  in  Greece, 
And  die  in  peace, 
And  are  buried  in  a  pot  of  ashes." 

You  know  the  usual  ending.  The  music  does  not  stop 
in  real  life.  Nor  do  we  find  young  dukes  or  young  lords 
prowling  about  in  this  country,  unless  it  is  for  their  own 
country's  good.  And,  even  the  young  duke,  if  he  were 
the  sort  of  man  painted  in  the  novels,  would  expect  some- 
thing more  of  his  wife  than  that  she  should  let  down  her 
hair  and  play  the  harp,  while  the  ambient  clouds,  tinged 
with  the  rosy  light  of  sunset,  approached  the  golden  sun 
as  if  weeping  for  the  glamour  of  some  lost  planet. 

Forgive  me  this  digression.     I  have  written  novels  my- 


1 6  LITERATURE  AS  A    FACTOR  IN  LIFE. 

self.  That  is  why  I  know  so  much  about  them.  And 
nobody  can  say  of  me  that  which  is  sometimes  said  of 
your  reverend  instructors, — "  What  does  he  know  about 
novels  ?  "  I  know  a  great  deal.  I  have  written  novels 
myself,  but  I  have  reformed. 

Let  me  tell  you  how  I  made  novels.  First,  I  must  ask 
you  not  to  misunderstand  me.  A  great  novel, — like 
"  Fabiola,"  "Ben  Hur,"  "  Lorna  Doone,"  "Esmond," 
"  Dion  and  the  Sybils," — is  a  gift  of  God.  But  the  aver- 
age novel  is  generally  a  gift  of  the  devil.  My  novels  were 
something  between  the  two, — purgatorial.  I  mention 
them  here,  to  show  you  that  the  novelist  very  often  smiles 
at  the  ignorance  of  his  audience,  and  regrets  the  necessity 
of  writing  trash  for  them.  My  novels  were  written  when 
I  was  a  young  man.  To  be  frank — and  I  say  mea  cnlpa, 
mea  culpa  in  parenthesis, — they  were  written  for  money. 
This  was  the  modus  operandi.  My  publisher  said :  "  This 
is  the  first  of  December,  we  want  a  novel  by  the  middle  of 
January."  "  Very  well,"  I  said.  "  The  fashion  in  novels 
now  is  that  the  hero  should  be  a  tall  light  man  with  side 
•whiskers  and  a  frank  open  smile  that  shows  rows  of  glit- 
tering white  teeth,  and  that  the  heroine  should  be  short, 
with  scornful,  curling  lips,  black  hair,  and  eyes  that  reflect 
the  light  like  shimmering  waves  when  the  silver  rays  of 
the  moon  fall  first  upon  it."  "Very  well,"  I  said,  "how 
much  ?  "  Of  course,  the  publisher  did  not  like  this  inter- 
ruption ;  but  I  always  settled  that  first  before  we  thought 
of  the  love  story  at  all.  "  It  must  be  a  novel  of  society." 
"  Very  well,"  I  said.  "  There  must  be  dukes  and  counts 


LITERATURE  AS  A    FACTOR   /A"  LIFE.  17 

and  lords  in  it."  "  Of  course,"  I  answered.  "And  above 
all,  Mr.  Egan,"  he  would  end  solemnly,  "  the  dresses  must 
be  described."  This  filled  me  with  fear,  but  I  never 
showed  it.  "And,  if  you  expect  to  make  money  out  of  it, 
there  must  be  plenty  of  action." 

I  was  just  twenty  years  old  at  this  time.  You  may  im- 
agine how  competent  I  was  to  write  of  life.  But  I  went 
on  with  the  story.  Love,  murder,  suicide,  bankruptcy, 
grief,  despair,  were  easy  to  me.  But  when  it  came  to 
the  question  of  women's  gowns,  I  was  unhappy, — very 
unhappy.  I  went  to  a  fashion  plate  for  consolation  and 
instruction.  It  was  worse  than  a  meteorological  map. 
But  I  saw  a  number  on  the  margin,  and  this  number  was 
duplicated  in  the  body  of  the  fashion  plate.  The  num- 
ber was  27, — it  ought  to  have  been  thirteen,  for  thirteen 
is  said  to  be  an  unlucky  number.  After  27  was  written 
these  words:  "A  pink  polonaise,"  and  then  some  ob- 
scure directions.  After  careful  reflection,  I  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  it  was  some  graceful  article  for  the 
neck, — a  sort  of  a  fichu.  How  could  an  unfortunate 
bachelor  know  better  ?  And  so  I  wrote:  "  Mabel  turned 
pale  at  her  mother's  words ;  and,  in  her  agitation  forget- 
ting the  presence  of  the  gay  throng  around,  threw  her 
polonaise  upon  the  ground  and  fainted  away." 

The  critics  very  soon  taught  me  what  polonaise  meant. 
I  know  it  now. 

As  I  said,  I  went  to  work  at  my  novel.  My  plan  was 
to  send  the  publisher  two  chapters  every  day.  He  re- 
sponded to  the  first  instalment  by  a  slip  of  paper  on  which 


1 8  I.ITERATUKE   AS  A    FACTOR   IN  LIFE. 

was  written  "  more  action."  I  understood  what  he  meant. 
He  wanted  a  few  more  murders  and  a  suicide  or  two. 
I  put  in  more  action.  The  next  day  there  came  another 
note,  "  more  action."  The  heroine  then  refused  five  offers 
of  marriage  and  I  made  the  villain,  — a  gentleman  with 
green  eyes  "  which  shone  with  the  glint  of  emeralds  in 
Cimmerian  darkness," — poison  his  grandfather  and  kidnap 
his  two  nephews.  And  I  said  to  myself:  "the  publisher 
will  be  satisfied  now."  But  he  was  not.  Though  you 
may  think  it  strange,  he  was  not.  Again,  after  reading 
this  chapter  of  horrors,  he  sent  me  another  demand  for 
action.  I  plunged  into  work  again.  And  when  the 
chapter  was  finished,  the  stage  was  as  well  covered  with 
corpses  as  it  is  in  the  last  act  of  Hamlet.  But  this  did 
not  satisfy  him.  You  can  imagine  my  feelings!  Action! 
I  plunged  into  horrors.  I  left  rny  hero  hanging  to  the 
brink  of  a  precipice  by  his  finger-tips,  while  he  strangled 
a  boa-constrictor  with  his  toes.  And,  after  all  this,  there 
came  in  response,  a  slip  of  paper  from  the  publisher  on 
which  was  written  "more  action!  " 

I  went  to  the  publishing-house  in  a  state  of  disgust.  I 
saw  the  office-boy.  "  Where  is  Mr.  So  and-So  ?  "  "At 
Newport."  "And  Mr.  Thomas  So-and-So?  "  "At  New- 
port, too."  "And  the  junior  member  of  the  firm  ?  "  "At 
Newport,  too."  "  How  long  have  they  been  away  ? " 
"  Oh,  about  ten  days  !  "  "  How  can  Mr.  So-and-So  have 
written  these  notes,  then  ?  "  "  Oh,"  said  the  office-boy, 
"  he  wrote  them  before  he  left ;  he  left  orders  to  have 
them  sent  to  you  every  day." 


LITERATURE  AS  A    FACTOR  IN  LIFE.  ig 

This  is  an  example  of  how  novels  are  written  by 
machinery  !  It  shows,  too,  how  much  reliance  is  to  be 
put  on  the  average  novelist's  pictures  of  life.  I  was  just 
twenty  years  old  when  I  wrote  a  financially  successful 
novel.  I  shall  not  tell  its  name,  because  I  am  not  proud 
of  it.  But  all  the  young  ladies  read  it  in  1872.  They 
thought,  no  doubt,  that  I  knew  life  very  well.  You  would 
have  fancied  that  I  floated  on  the  crest  of  the  most  ex- 
alted society ;  that  I  knew  nobody  less  than  a  duke ;  that 
I  spent  my  life  in  one  round  of  polite  dissipation ;  that  I 
was  a  very  sentimental  person.  But  in  reality,  I  spent 
my  time  in  studying  very  hard,  and  I  seldom  went  out  at 
all. 

Do  you  see  how  the  books  which  form  our  young 
people's  views  of  life  are  made  ?  At  the  risk  of  seeming 
egotistical,  I  have  given  you  my  experience.  Mr.  Nugent 
Robinson,  who  writes  such  charming  things  in  the  Ave 
Maria,  once  told  me  that  he  had  longed  to  meet  a  certain 
famous  novelist.  He  had  at  last  an  invitation  to  an  as- 
sembly at  which  she  was  to  be  present.  He  yearned  for 
the  moment  to  come ;  it  came,  and  the  famous  author, 
whose  sentimental  and  poetic  descriptions  of  love  and  life 
had  entranced,  was  in  the  act  of  drinking  what  the  English 
call  a  pint  of  half-and-half.  The  foam  which  clung  to  her 
lips  was  not  that  of  sibylline  inspiration,  but  of  prosaic 
porter! 

And  yet  this  lady's  novels  are  devoured  with  avidity  by 
people  who  take  all  their  ideas  of  the  refinements  of  life 
from  her!  Do  not  put  your  trust  in  the  average  novelist. 


20  LITERATURE  AS  A   FACTOR  IN  LIFE. 

For  the  sake  of  the  tone  of  your  mind,  for  the  sake  of 
your  style  in  writing,  do  not  look  on  Literature  as  a  mere 
distraction.  They  say, — I  do  not  know  how  true  it  is, — 
that  if  one  writes  with  lemon  juice  on  a  blank  sheet  of 
paper  and,  at  some  time  after,  hold  the  sheet  before  the 
fire,  the  writing  will  appear  distinctly.  And  so  it  is  with 
what  you  read  in  youth.  It  may  seem  to  have  no  effect ; 
but  when  the  fires  of  the  world  try  you,  this  apparently 
colorless  writing  blazes  out  and  helps  to  direct  your  actions 
in  moments  of  temptation. 

Choose  a  few  books.  Keep  them  with  you.  Read 
them  often.  Acquire  a  taste  for  them.  Be  satisfied  with 
nothing  but  the  best.  Begin  by  reading  some  parts  of 
the  Sacred-  Scriptures.  For,  apart  from  its  being  the 
Word,  there  is  no  higher  poetry  on  earth  than  Isaias,  no 
higher  prose  than  the  parables  of  our  Lord.  Then  we 
have  "  The  Following  of  Christ," — a  book  recognized  even 
by  infidels  as  a  masterpiece.  Think  for  a  moment  of  the 
measureless  influence  which  these  books  have  had  on  the 
lives  of  millions.  Take  lower  books, — take  great  novels 
like  that  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  take  Robinson  Crusoe, — 
which,  by  the  way,  is  not  a  book  merely  for  children.  A 
great  philosophy  underlies  it.  It  shows  what  a  man,  by 
exercising  the  energies  God  has  given  him,  may  do.  It 
is  a  prose  epic  on  the  triumph  of  mind  over  matter. 
"  The  great  masterpieces  of  the  world  are  thus,  quite 
apart  from  the  solace  they  give  us,  the  master  instruments 
of  a  solid  education." 

If  you  leave  school  without  a  taste  for  good  books,  your 


LITERATURE  AS  A    FACTOR  IX  LIFE.  2I 

education  has  partially  failed.    And  so  exacting  has  society 
become,  so  important  is  Literature  in  life,  that  if  you  look  . 
on  it  as  a  mere  amusement, — a  light  and  trifling  amuse- 
ment,— you  will  have  deep  regrets  your  whole  life  long. 


LECTURE   II. 

CHAUCER; 

SOME  GLIMPSES  OF  HIS  TIME,  HIS  LIFE  AND  HIS  FRIENDS. 

I  have  chosen  Chaucer  as  the  subject  of  this  lecture, 
because  he  is  really  the  father  of  English  poetry,  and  be- 
cause the  consideration  of  his  works  gives  us  an  oppor- 
tunity of  corroborating  a  theory  which  ought  to  permeate 
all  our  studies  in  English  literature. 

This  theory, — which  is  amply  supported  by  facts, — is 
that  all  English  poets,  from  Chaucer  to  Tennyson,  from 
Milton  to  Longfellow,  from  Shakspeare  to  Aubrey  de 
Vere,  owe  all  that  is  best  in  them  to  the  inspiration  of 
Christianity;  and  when  I  say  Christianity,  I  mean  the 
highest  form  of  Christianity — the  Catholic  Church. 

We  all  know  only  too  well  that  the  English  language  is 
the  language  of  anti-Catholicism,  and  that  its  literature 
has  been  for  almost  three  centuries  a  conspiracy  agains-t 
the  Church.  But,  still,  I  insist  that  I  can  prove  that  the 
most  glowing,  the  most  exaltedly  impassioned,  the  most 
noble  passages  in  the  greatest  of  English-speaking  poets 
derive  their  light  from  the  halo  that  surrounds  the  doc- 
trines, the  practices,  the  legends  of  the  Christian  Church. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Geoffrey  Chaucer,  the  father  of 
English  poetry,  was  a  devout  Catholic.  Hundreds  of 


CHA  UCER.  23 

passages  in  Shakspeare  could  be  quoted  as  evidence  of 
the  Catholic  feeling,  if  not  the  Catholic  Faith,  of  that 
great  master.  Milton  glorified  Satan ;  but  yet  Milton  owes 
the  whole  frame-work  of  his  "  Paradise  Lost "  to  the  theol- 
ogy of  the  Church.  As  to  Tennyson,  who  would  dream 
of  comparing  the  sentimental  whining  and  complaining  of 
"  Maud  "  and  "  Locksley  Hall "  with  the  serenity  of  the 
"  Idyls  of  the  King,"  when  the  effects  of  Catholic  tradi- 
tion fall  like  the  rosy  glow  of  dawn  on  the  pure  marble  of 
a  Corinthian  temple.  Who  can  think  of  the  penitence  of 
Guinevere  in  the  convent,  or  the  speech  of  King  Arthur  to 
Sir  Bedivere, — that  most  exquisite  passage  in  Tennyson, — 

"  If  thou  shouldst  never  see  my  face  again, 
Pray  for  my  soul," 

without  admitting  that  the  spirit  of  the  Church  has  tri- 
umphed in  English  poetry  despite  the  conspiracy  of  the 
English  language  against  it ;  for,  in  Longfellow's  master- 
pieces, is  not  the  greatest  "  Evangeline  ?  "  and  in  Aubrey 
de  Vere — a  writer  whom  I  most  earnestly  recommend 
to  you,  we  find  a  perfect  synthesis  between  the  highest 
religious  idea  and  the  highest  poetical  embodiment  of  it. 
It  may  startle  some  of  you  to  hear  the  name  of  Aubrey 
de  Vere  mentioned  in  the  same  breath  with  that  of  Ten- 
nyson. But,  remember,  I  am  not  here  as  the  follower  of 
any  other  critic.  And  I  do  not  ask  you  to  follow  me 
blindly;  but  I  insist  that  we  Catholics — we  Christians — 
shall  in  literature,  as  in  all  other  sciences  and  arts,  lead, 
not  follow.  We  have  inherited  the  glory  and  the  wealth 
of  all  the  ages.  Let  us,  then,  not  accept  the  standards 


24  CHA  UCER. 

which  an  alien  world  has  made  for  us.  "  In  hoc  signo 
vinces" — By  the  sign  of  Faith  we  conquer,  and  by  the 
sign  of  Faith  we  lead.  We  have  no  need  to  be  afraid  of 
the  truth,  and  no  need  to  be  afraid  of  falsehood. 

For  a  long  time,  the  writers  of  literary  text-books  have 
told  us  that  Chaucer  was  a  Wycliffite — a  follower  of  an 
unfortunate  man  who  wanted  to  put  the  fallible  authority 
of  human  judgment  in  the  place  of  the  infallible  authority 
of  the  Church.  In  truth,  so  settled  had  become  this  opin- 
ion among  even  men  of  letters,  that,  to  my  amazement, 
one  of  the  cleverest  authors  of  my  acquaintance  said,  in 
answer  to  an  assertion  of  Chaucer's  Catholicity:  "You, 
Romanists,  are  claiming  everybody." 

Now  it  is  our  business  to  displace  so  far  as  possible  the 
fallacy  that  Chaucer  was  a  Wycliffite,  a  Lollard,  or  a 
member  of  any  sect.  We  owe  this  to  the  interests  of 
truth  and  to  the  memory  of  a  poet  who,  however  short  he 
fell  of  what  ought  to  be  expected  of  so  well  instructed  a 
man  and  so  great  a  poet,  was  true  in  his  best  moments  to 
the  Church. 

I  do  not  ask  you  to  read  all  of  Chaucer.  Indeed,  I 
think  it  is  wise  that  you  should  read  only  parts  of  his 
works.  But  the  parts  that  your  instructors  select  for  you 
are  the  best  parts,  and  you  lose  nothing  by  missing  the 
others.  Chaucer,  repentant  for  the  license  of  some  of  his 
poems,  wrote: 

"  For  he  shall  find  enough,  both  great  and  small, 
Of  storial  thing  that  toucheth  gentleness, 
Likewise  morality  and  holiness  ; 
Blame  ye  not  me,  if  you  should  choose  amiss." 


CHAUCER.  25 

But  the  poet  could  not  thus  thrust  the  responsibility  for 
his  bad  work  on  the  reader.  We  will  act  on  his  advice, 
and  avoid  all  that  repels  us.  The  good  in  his  poems  is 
more  than  enough. 

Chaucer,  like  most  poets,  borrowed  the  plots  and  some- 
times even  the  words  of  his  poetical  stories  from  older 
poets.  He  gave  us  the  foundation  of  our  language. 
Dante,  in  Italy,  made  by  his  works  one  language  out  of 
the  many  diverse  dialects  of  Italy.  Before  the  author  of 
the  "  Inferno  " — who  owed  as  much  to  Catholic  theology 
as  to  himself — consolidated  the  melodies  and  harmonies 
of  the  Italian  tongues  into  one  language,  the  Lombards, 
the  Neapolitans,  the  Piedmontese,  the  Florentines,  the 
Pisans,  the  Genoese,  had  their  dialects,  and  a  poem  writ- 
ten in  one  dialect  was  not  understood  by  the  people  using 
another.  Dante  changed  all  this:  he  made  one  grand 
language  for  the  whole  of  Italy ;  so  Chaucer  unconsciously 
imitated  him.  Before  Chaucer  began  to  write,  the  English 
was  despised.  The  learned  wrote  in  Latin  or  Norman- 
French  ;  but  Chaucer  touched  what  appeared  to  be  com- 
mon earth,  and  behold!  a  clear  stream  gushed  out — "a 
well,"  as  Ben  Jonson  has  it,  "  of  English  undefiled." 

He  borrowed  much  from  the  Italians,  and  we  have  to 
regret  that,  in  taking  some  of  his  stories  from  Boccaccio, 
he  took  some  of  the  licentiousness  of  that  unhappy  story- 
teller. 

Chaucer's  life  covered  the  last  half  of  the  fourteenth 
century.  He  died  in  the  last  year  of  that  century.  His 
latest  biographer — Mr.  A.  W.  Ward — says  that  the  life  of 


26  CHA  UCEK. 

the  poet  covers  rather  more  than  the  interval  between  the 
most  glorious  epoch  of  Edward  III.'s  reign — for  Crecy 
was  fought  in  1346 — and  the  downfall,  in  1399,  of  his 
unfortunate  successor,  Richard  II.  Under  this  king  oc- 
curred that  horrible  war  of  the  peasants,  who  were  urged 
to  the  general  destruction  of  all  existing  institutions  by 
the  teachings  of  Wycliff, — the  chief  anarchist  of  his  time. 

It  would  be  silly  to  deny  that  abuses  in  religious  disci- 
pline did  not  exist  in  Chaucer's  time.  But  the  Church 
was,  and  is  always,  the  same.  Some  of  the  religious,  and 
many  of  the  people,  had  begun  to  love  wealth  and  ease 
more  than  the  cross  of  Christ  or  the  honor  of  His  Blessed 
Mother.  The  poison  in  the  nation's  blood,  which  made 
it  delirious  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.,  had  already  be- 
gun to  work  in  that  of  Edward  III.,  and  the  poet's  quick 
insight  into  the  abuses  which  were  sapping  the  spiritual 
strength  of  the  people  have  caused  many  critics  to  set 
down  Chaucer  as  a  follower  of  Wycliff.  But  these  critics 
are  filled  with  the  idea  that  Henry  VIII.  discovered  re- 
ligion. 

I  am  sorry  to  see  that  even  the  amiable  Miss  Mitford 
applauds  Chaucer  for  his  heretical  tendencies.  Miss  Mit- 
ford ought  to  have  known  better.  I  hope  I  may  digress 
enough  to  ask  you  to  her  delightful  sketches  of  country 
life.  "  Our  Village  "  and  "  Belford  Regis  "  are  as  fresh 
and  sweet  as  the  English  daisies,  whose  praises  Chaucer 
sings  in  "The  Flower  and  the  Leaf."  There  are  not 
many  people  who  read  "  Belford  Regis "  or  "  Our  Vil- 
lage;" but  I  hope  you  will  revive  a  taste  for  them,  and, 


CHAL'CER.  27 

living  in  the  country  as  you  do  a  great  part  of  the  year, 
you  will  find  them  very  charming. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  very  hard  to  forgive  Miss  Mitford  for 
thinking  that  Geoffrey  Chaucer  reviled  the  Church  in 
which  he  was  baptized,  and  which  he  loved.  An  impartial 
examination  of  his  writings  will  show  that  Chaucer,  like 
all  true  Catholics  of  his  time,  saw  that  pride  and  luxury, 
sloth  and  simony,  hiding  under  the  desecrated  cloak  of 
religion,  were,  like  moths,  separating  the  threads  of  the 
sacred  garment. 

As  England  grew  prosperous,  the  king,  the  nobles,  and 
even  a  few  priests,  defied  Rome  more  and  more.  And  it 
is  an  axiom  that  the  farther  any  Christian  nation  gets  from 
the  salutary  influence  of  the  Pope,  the  nearer  it  gets  to 
Anti-Christ.  In  England,  there  were  religious  who  loved 
Caesar  more  than  God,  who  loved  their  wealth  and  the 
whims  of  their  king  more  than  the  Vicar  of  Christ.  An 
example  of  this  we  see  later,  in  the  fate  of  Cardinal 
Wolsey. 

In  reading  such  portions  of  "The  Canterbury  Tales1' 
as  your  judicious  teachers  may  choose  for  you,  you  will 
perhaps  wonder  why  the  pilgrimage  resembled  more  a 
picnic  than  a  sacred  procession  to  a  venerated  spot.  But 
these  pilgrimages  had  degenerated;  and  their  character 
may  be  shown  from  the  act  of  an  archbishop,  in  refusing  his 
blessing  to  a  company  of  pilgrims,  telling  them  that  for 
sinners  without  contrition  there  were  no  indulgences  at 
the  shrine  of  St.  Thomas.  Of  true  priests  and  true  religi- 
ous there  were  many;  and  they,  seeing  that  the  laxity  of 


28  CffA  UCER. 

some  of  their  brethren  would  lead  to  disaster,  redoubled 
their  good  works.  But  the  abuses  and  the  defiance  of 
Rome  brought  down  the  curse  of  heresy  on  the  English 
people. 

Like  most  poets,  Chaucer  demanded  more  of  the  ideal 
from  the  world  than  he  was  willing  to  put  into  his  own 
practices.  His  ridicule  often  played  about  abuses  more 
from  wantonness  than  from  any  desire  to  amend  them. 
Vice  was  picturesque ;  therefore  he  painted  it.  He  seems 
half  disgusted,  half  amused  by  the  evils  of  his  day.  He 
never  rises  to  righteous  indignation.  He  is  always  rever- 
ent to  the  Church  and  her  dogmas.  His  faith  in  our  eyes 
may  seem  childlike ;  in  his  time  it  was  only  manly. 

No  poet,  except  Shakspeare,  reflected  more  than  a 
phase  of  his  century,  and  Chaucer  could  not  reflect  fully 
the  various  tendencies  of  his  time.  If  our  poet  had  always 
been  as  moral  in  his  stories  as  he  was  firm  in  his  faith, 
we  might  have  even  greater  reason  to  be  proud  of  him. 
That  his  better  training  led  him  to  feel  ashamed  of  the 
immorality  that  stains  some  of  his  pages  is  evident  from 
the  apology  he  makes,  and  from  the  contrite  prayer  he 
appends  to  "  The  Canterbury  Tales."  Had  the  age  been 
utterly  vicious,  Chaucer,  not  having  the  present  moral 
world  in  view,  would  scarcely  have  thought  it  necessary 
to  apologize.  The  description  of  the  poor  parson  does 
not  strike  us  as  containing  anything  unusual,  and  Chaucer 
to-day  might  find  many  like  him  among  our  priests : 

"A  good  man  was  ther  of  religioun, 
And  was  a  poure  persoun  of  a  toun  ; 


CHA  UCER.  29 

But  riche  he  was  of  holy  thought  and  werk 

He  was  also  a  lerned  man,  a  clerk, 

That  Cristes  Gospel  trewely  wolde  preche  ; 

His  parischens  devoutly  wolde  teche. 

Benigne  he  was,  and  wonder  diligent, 

And  in  adversite  ful  pacient ; 

And  such  he  was  i-proved  ofte  sithes,* 

Ful  loth  were  him  to  curse  for  his  tythes. 

Bui  rather  wolde  he  yeven,  out  of  dowte, 

Unto  his  poure  parischens  aboute 

Of  his  offrynge,  and  eek  of  his  substaunce 

He  cowde  in  litel  thing  han  suffisaunce. 

\Vyd  was  his  parische,  and  houses  fer  asonder, 

But  he  ne  lafte  not  for  reyne  ne  thonder, 

In  sikenesse  nor  in  meschief  to  visite 

The  ferreste  in  his  parische,  moche  and  lite, 

Upon  his  feet,  and  in  his  hond  a  staf. 

This  noble  ensample  to  his  scheep  he  yaf. 

That  ferst  he  wroughte,  and  afterward  he  taughte, 

Out  of  the  Gospel  he  who  wordes  caughte, 

And  this  figure  he  addede  eek  therto, 

That  if  gold  ruste,  what  shall  yren  doo  ? 

For  if  a  prest  be  foul,  on  whom  we  truste, 

No  wonder  is  a  lewe'd  man  to  ruste  ; 

And  schame  it  is,  if  that  a  prest  tak  keep, 

A  [filthy]  schepherde  and  a  clene  scheep ; 

\Vel  oughte  a  prest  ensample  for  to  yive, 

By  his  clennesse,  how  that  his  scheep  schulde  lyve. 

He  sette  not  his  benefice  to  byre, 

And  leet  his  scheep  encombred  in  the  myre. 

And  ran  to  Londone,  unto  seynte  Poules, 

To  seeken  him  a  chaunterie  for  soules.f 

Or  with  a  bretherhede  to  ben  withholde  ; 

But  dwelte  at  boom,  and  kepte  wel  his  folde, 

So  that  the  wolfe  ne  made  it  not  myscarye  ; 

He  was  a  schepherd  and  no  mercenarie. 

And  though  he  holy  were,  and  vertuous, 

He  was  to  sinful  man  nought  despitous, 

*  Ofttiraes.  i  An  endowment  for  saying  Masses. 


30  CHA  UCER. 

"  Ne  of  his  speche  daungerous  *  ne  digne, 
But  in  his  teching  discret  and  benigne. 
To  drawe  folk  to  heven  by  fairnesse 
By  good  ensample,  this  was  his  busynesse : 
But  it  were  eny  persone  obstinat, 
What  so  he  were,  of  high  or  lowe  estat, 
Him  wolde  he  snybbe  scharply  for  the  nones. 
A  petter  preest,  I  trowe,  ther  nowher  non  is. 
He  vvaytede  after  no  pompe  and  reverence, 
Ne  makede  him  a  spiced  f  conscience, 
But  Cristes  lore,  and  His  apostles  twelve, 
He  taughte,  but  ferst  He  folwede  it  Himselve." 

His  fervent  "  Orison  to  the  Holy  Virgin,"  beginning — 

"  Mother  of  God  and  Virgin  undefiled," 

is  earnestly  Catholic ;  and  in  his  "A  B  C  " — a  translation 
from  the  French — there  is  an  address  to  the  Blessed  Vir- 
gin in  twenty-three  stanzas,  each  of  which  begins  with  one 
of  the  letters  of  the  alphabet  arranged  in  proper  succes- 
sion. St.  Charles  Borromeo  did  not  go  outside  the  Church 
in  his  attempt  to  bring  her  unfaithful  servants  nearer  to 
her,  and  Wycliffe,  had  he  helped  to  revive  that  faith  which 
negligence,  avarice,  and  luxury  were  gradually  weakening 
in  the  hearts  of  Englishmen,  the  best  men  in  England — 
and  our  poet  among  them — would  have  been  with  him. 
But  with  heresy  Chaucer  had  no  sympathy.  In  the  "  Par- 
sones  Tale "  he  exclaims  against  the  doctrines  of 
Wycliffe  and  the  spoliation  of  church  property;  and  if 
there  were  the  slightest  doubt  in  the  minds  of  careful 
readers,  the  "  Prayer  of  Chaucer "  at  the  end  of  "  The 
Canterbury  Tales  "  shows  he  died  a  devout  Catholic. 

Chaucer's  English  is  to  Dante's  Italian  what  a  bagpipe 

*  Haughty.  t  Nice,  fastidious. 


CHA  UCER.  3 1 

is  to  an  organ;  but  there  is  a  direct  simplicity  about 
Chaucer  to  which  Dante  never  attained.  Compare,  for 
instance,  Dante's  version  of  the  "  Story  of  Ugolino  "  with 
Chaucer.  Chaucer  revered  this  wise  bard  of  Florence; 
but  in  borrowing  the  "Story  of  Ugolino,"  he  treated  it 
with  more  simplicity  than  that  divine  poet.  It  is  a  good 
example  of  Chaucer's  peculiar  qualities.  In  tenderness 
and  humanity  it  far  exceeds  Dante's  version. 

Chaucer  owed  even  more  to  the  French  trouv&res  than 
to  the  Italians.  It  is  said  that  he  met  Petrarch  in  Italy. 
His  life  was  not  unworthy  of  a  poet,  being  at  the  end 
serene  and  peaceful.  Chaucer  married,  about  1369,  a 
lady  named  Philippa.  It  is  possible  that  the  favorite 
flower  of  this  lady  may  have  been  the  daisy,  for  Chaucer 
sings  of  this  simple  flower  in  the  prologue  to  the  "  Legend 
of  Good  Women,"  and  in  "  The  Flower  and  the  Leaf." 

His  refrain  is: 

"  Si  douce  est  la  Marguerite." 

His  "  marguerite  "  was  not  our  field  daisy,  but  the  pink 
and  white  many-petalled  flower  we  find  in  old-fashioned 
gardens.  His  most  famous  work,  "The  Canterbury 
Tales," — stories  told  by  pilgrims  on  their  way  to  the 
shrine  of  St.  Thomas  a  Becket, — were  written  in  the  com- 
parative ease  of  his  later  days.  Most  of  his  life  was  spent 
at  court.  He  was  page  in  Prince  Lionel's  household; 
he  served  in  the  army,  and  was  taken  prisoner  in  France ; 
he  was  squire  to  Edward  III.;  he  went  as  king's  commis- 
sioner to  Italy  in  1372;  he  was  controller  of  the  customs 
of  the  port  of  London  from  1381  to  1386;  he  was  a  mem- 


3  2  CHAUCER. 

ber  of  the  House  of  Commons  for  Kent  in  1386,  and  in 
1389  clerk  of  the  king's  works  at  Windsor. 

His  contemporaries  appreciated  his  genius.  Gowe-r 
says  that  all  England  knew  his  fame;  Lydgate  calls  him 
"noble;"  Occleve  names  him  "the  first  finder  of  our 
faire  langage."  The  Scotch  poets,  beginning  with  James 
I.,  were  enthusiastic  about  Chaucer. 

Chaucer  adapted  the  "  Roman  de  la  Rose."  Dry  den 
later,  attempted  a  similar  task, — the  adapting  of  Chaucer; 
but  the  bloomlike  expression  is  wanting.  Most  of  us  will 
always  know.  Chaucer  but  through  Dryden  and  Pope ;  for 
our  century  has  small  patience  with  diction  that  requires 
a  glossary.  But  Pope's  "  Temple  of  Fame  "  is  merely  a 
parody.  Chaucer  in  sword  and  periwig  was  about  as 
poetic  a  sight  as  a  young  faun  in  the  dress  of  our  decade. 

When  the  mellow  light  of  sunset  fell  on  the  poet,  his 
lines  were  cast  in  pleasant  places.  He  was  poor,  and  yet 
serene  of  mind.  It  is  easy  to  imagine  him:  grave,  yet 
with  a  twinkle  in  his  eye,  talking,  rosary  in  hand,  as  he 
is  represented  in  a  picture,  with  the  blind  poet  Gower, 
the  philosophical  Dominican  Strode,  the  youthful  Lydgate, 
or  Occleve,  who  furtively  sketched  a  portrait  of  his  master 
on  the  margin  of  a  precious  book.  He  died  in  peace  with 
all  the  world.  Would  that  he  had  written  no  line  we 
would  wish  to  blot! 

Langley,  or  Langland,  who  was  contemporary  with 
Chaucer,  does  not  seem  to  have  felt  his  influence.  "  Piers 
Plowman  "  is  the  work  of  a  visionary  brooding  over  the 
wants  of  the  people,  who  turns  at  last  from  the  picture  of 


CHA  UCER.  33 

an  ideal  reformer  to  come  to  the  Saviour  who  had  already 
come.  Langland,  in  his  earnestness,  high  purpose,  and 
seriousness,  is  in  striking  contrast  to  Chaucer.  "  Piers 
Plowman  "  is  in  the  unrhymed  alliterative  metre  of  the 
older  English  period — almost  the  only  metre  that  can  be 
called  English,  as  Mr.  Skeat  remarks  in  his  sketch  of 
Langley,*  since  all  others  have  been  borrowed  from 
French  or  Italian. 

Of  him  whom  Chaucer  and  Lydgate  call  the  moral 
Gower — though  his  best-known  work,  "  Confessio  Aman- 
tis,"  would  to-day  be  considered  anything  but  moral — 
very  little  is  known.  He  seems  to  have  been  born  in 
1330,  and  to  have  died  in  1408,  having  been  blind  for 
eight  or  nine  years  before  his  death.  He  was  a  gentleman 
of  an  old  family  owning  estates  in  Kent  and  Suffolk. 
The  place  of  his  birth  is  unknown.  He  probably  died  in 
the  priory  of  St.  Mary  Overies,  Southwark,  in  the  church 
of  which — now  called  St.  Saviour's — his  tomb  may  be  still 
seen.  It  is  not  known  when  his  first  work,  "  Speculum 
Meditantis,"  written  in  French  verse,  was  composed.  The 
second,  "Vox  Clamantis,"  in  Latin  elegiac  verse,  was 
written  between  1382  and  1384.  The  third,  "Confessio 
Amantis,"  was  written,  owing  to  the  success  with  which 
Chaucer  had  wielded  his  "langage  faire,"  in  English. 
The  grave  and  moral  author  mixes  up  Christianity  and 
paganism  in  the  most  astonishing  manner  in  "  Confessio 
Amantis,"  and,  strange  to  say,  he  seems  altogether  uncon- 
scious of  the  incompatibility  of  these  elements.  Religion 

*  "  The  English  Poets,"  vol.  i. 


34  CHA  UCER. 

and  passion  change  places  with  much  complaisance,  and 
the  impartial  reader  is  reluctantly  forced  to  conclude  that 
the  "  moral  Gower "  had  an  amazing  faculty  for  mixing 
things  up.  He  possessed  no  spark  of  that  genius  which 
illuminated  everything  that  Chaucer  touched.  "  Florent," 
a  story  in  the  "  Confessio  Amantis,"  is  not  without  merit. 
Its  moral  is  that 

"Alle  women  most  desire  " 

to  have  their  own  way.  After  a  long  dialogue,  Florent 
yields  his  will  entirely  to  that  of  his  wife. 

Chaucer  and  Gower  were  intimate  friends,  but  they  had 
a  quarrel  which  was,  however,  made  up.  There  is  evi- 
dence that  Chaucer  called  one  of  Govver's  tales  "  corsed," 
which,  if  it  means  "  sensational,"  shows  that  Gower  had 
an  abnormally  forgiving  and  unpoetical  spirit. 

John  Lydgate,  another  of  Chaucer's  friends,  seems  to 
have  been  stimulated  to  write  by  the  example  of  his  mas- 
ter and  by  his  love  for  the  French  poets  of  his  time.  To 
Chaucer  we  owe  the  fact  that  he  wrote  in  English.  At 
his  best  he  reflects  his  model,  for  whom  he  cherished  the 
profoundest  admiration,  and  whom  he  was  proud  of  im- 
itating. His  first  long  poem,  "The  Storie  of  Thebes," 
written  when  he  was  nearly  fifty,  he  represents  as  a  new 
Canterbury  Tale  told  by  himself  after  he  had  joined  the 
company  of  pilgrims  at  Canterbury.  In  it  he  uses  the 
ten-syllable  rhyming  couplet  after  the  manner  of  Chaucer 
in  "The  Knightes  Tale."  Lydgate  had  a  remarkable 
faculty  of  versification,  but  he  lacked  the  force  of  Chaucer. 
There  are  passages  full  of  spirit,  followed  by  long  stretches 


CHA  UCER. 


35 


of  dreary  verse-making.  Another  important  poem  was 
the  "Storie  of  Troy,"  begun  about  the  year  1412,  at  the 
request  of  Prince  Henry,  afterwards  Henry  V.  The 
prince  asked  that  Lydgate  should  do  the  noble  story  of 
Troy  into  English,  as  other  poets  had  done  in  other  lan- 
guages, and  Lydgate  complied.  He  finished  the  fifth  and 
last  book  in  1420.  It  is  written  in  the  ten-syllable  coup- 
lets, and  founded  on  Guido  di  Colonna's  prose  history  of 
Troy.  In  the  third  book,  where  the  story  of  Troilus  and 
Cressida  is  introduced,  Lydgate  seizes  the  chance  to  pay 
an  ardent  tribute  to  Chaucer.  His  versification,  although 
he  had  evidently  mastered  his  art  as  far  as  it  went,  is 
often  rough.  "  If  the  structure  of  the  lines  is  attentively 
considered,"  says  Mr.  Thomas  Arnold,  who  writes  a  notice 
of  Lydgate  in  "  The  English  Poets,"  "  it  will  be  seen  that 
he  did  not  regard  them  as  consisting  of  ten  syllables  and 
five  feet,  or  at  least  that  he  did  not  generally  so  regard 
them,  but  rather  as  made  up  of  two  halves  or  counter- 
balancing members,  each  containing  two  accents.  Re- 
membering this,  the  reader  can  get  through  a  long  passage 
by  Lydgate  or  Barclay  with  some  degree  of  comfort; 
though  if  he  were  to  read  the  same  passage  with  the  ex- 
pectation of  meeting  always  the  due  number  of  syllables, 
his  ear  would  be  continually  disappointed  and  annoyed. 
This  vicious  method  of  versification  was  probably  a  legacy 
from  the  alliterative  poets,  whose  popularity,  especially  in 
the  north  of  England,  was  so  great  that  their  peculiar 
rhythm  long  survived  after  rhyme  and  measure  had  carried 
the  day." 


3  6  CHA  UCF.R, 

Lydgate,  although  a  monk  ostensibly,  belonging  to  the 
monastery  of  St.  Edmund  at  Bury,  does  not  seem,  from  his 
own  account,  to  have  done  much  credit  to  his  cal'ling: 

' '  Of  religioun  I  weryd  a  black  habite, 
Oonly  outward  by  apparence." 

Toward  the  end  of  his  life,  however,  his  mind  took  a 
more  edifying  turn,  and  he  composed  a  metrical  "  Life  of 
St.  Edmund "  and  the  "  Legend  of  St.  Alban,"  which 
raised  him  much  higher  in  the  estimation  of  his  good 
brothers  the  monks  than  all  his  idle  tales  of  Thebes  and 
Troy.  Lydgate's  most  notable  work  was  "The  Fall  of 
the  Princes,"  founded  on  a  French  version  of  the  Latin 
treatise  by  Boccaccio,  "  De  Casibus  Virorum  Illustrium." 
The  title-page  of  this  poem,  in  nine  books,  printed  in  folio 
in  1558,  sufficiently  explains  the  subject.  It  runs:  "The 
Tragedies  gathered  by  John  Bochas  of  all  such  Princes 
as  fell  from  theyr  Estates  throughe  the  Mutability  of  For- 
tune since  the  creation  of  Adam  until  his  time;  wherin 
may  be  seen  what  vices  bring  menne  to  destruccion,  wyth 
notable  warninges  howe  the  like  may  be  avoyded.  Trans- 
lated into  English  by  John  Lydgate,  Monk  of  Burye." 
Lydgate  is  at  his  best  in  this  poem ;  he  uses  the  seven- 
line  stanza,  and  gets  nearer  to  the  ease  and  liquidity  of 
versification  which  distinguish  Chaucer.  Of  his  minor 
poems,  "  London  Lickpenny,"  which  describes  the  trials  of 
a  penniless  wanderer  in  the  great  metropolis,  gives  a  very 
vivid  idea  of  the  sights  and  sounds  of  the  London  streets : 

"  Then  unto  London  I  dyd  me  hye 
Of  all  the  land  it  beareth  the  pryse  : 


CHAUCER.  37 

'  Hot  pescodes,'  one  began  to  crye, 
"  Strabery  rype,  and  cherryes  in  the  ryse' ; 
One  bad  me  come  nere  and  by  some  spyce, 
Peper  and  safforne  they  gan  me  bede, 
But  for  lack  of  mony  I  myght  not  spede." 

Of  the  poems  of  Thomas  Occleve,  who  wrote  "  De 
Regimine  Principum  "  in  1411,  the  address  to  Chaucer  is 
the  most  beautiful.  He  reflected  rather  than  originated ; 
his  work  shows  at  times  a  charming  simplicity  and  lofty 
religious  feelings ;  but  it  is  dwarfed  by  comparison  with 
that  of  the  poet,  whom  he  calls — 

"  O  maister  dere  and  fader  reverent, 
My  maister  Chaucer!  floure  of  eloquence." 

Occleve  was  born  between  1365  and  1370;  it  is  be- 
lieved that  he  lived  to  a  great  age,  but  the  precise  date  of 
his  death  is  unknown. 

Robert  Henryson  is  the  brightest  light  among  the  stars 
that  circled  in  the  train  of  Chaucer.  Of  him  little  is 
known.  It  is  certain  that,  in  1462,  he  was  incorporated  of 
the  University  of  Glasgow,  and  that  he  was  afterwards 
school-master  in  Dunfermline,  and  that  he  worked  there 
as  a  notary  public.  Henryson  was  a  true  poet,  and  he 
possessed  what  we  call  to-day  a  feeling  for  his  art  in  a 
high  degree.  His  narrative  is  gay,  easy,  rapid ;  his  touch 
light  and  vivid,  and  his  dramatic  power,  both  in  dialogue 
and  construction,  is  not  surpassed  by  Chaucer.  His  verse 
is  musical  and  well  weighed ;  he  liked  to  try  his  hand  at 
new  refrains,  strange  metres,  and  unexpected  rhymes. 
His  dialect,  to  the  modern  eye  and  ear,  is  almost  incom- 
prehensible, but  long  study  and  great  love  will  show  him 


3  8  CHA  UCER. 

who  cares  to  search  that  Henryson  used  it  as  the  old  com- 
posers used  the  harpsichord.  It  is  an  instrument  of  nar- 
row compass,  yet  capable  of  exquisite  harmonies  under 
the  hand  of  a  master. 

"  To  know  the  use  he  made  of  it  in  dialogue,  he  must  be  studied 
in  '  Robyne  and  Makyne,'  the  earliest  English  pastoral ;  or  at  such 
moments  as  that  of  the  conversation  between  the  widows  of  the  Cock 
who  has  just  been  snatched  away  by  the  Fox  ;  or  in  the  incompara- 
ble '  Taile  of  the  Wolf  that  got  the  Nek-Herring  throw  the  Wrinkis 
of  the  Fox  that  Begylit  the  Cadgear,'  which,  outside  La  Fontaine,  I 
conceive  to  be  one  of  the  high-water  marks  of  the  modern  apologue. 
In  such  poems  as  '  The  Three  Deid  Powis,'*  where  he  has  antici- 
pated a  something  of  Hamlet  at  Yorick's  grave,  as  '  The  Abbey 
Walk,'  the  '  Garmond  of  Fair  Ladies,'  the  '  Reasoning  Between  Age 
and  Youth,'  it  is  employed  as  a  vehicle  for  the  expression  of  austere 
thought,  of  quaint  conceitcdness,  of  solemn  and  earnest  devotion,  of 
satirical  comment,  with  equal  ease  and  equal  success. "  \ 

There  are  delightful  touches  of  fancy  in  all  Henryson's 
poems,  which  the  dialect  in  which  they  are  written  pre- 
vents us  from  quoting.  To  most  of  us  Burns  requires  a 
glossary;  and,  therefore,  Henryson's  mixture  of  old 
English  and  Scotch  would  be  hopeless  in  an  age  when  he 
who  reads  runs. 

After  Skelton — who,  by  the  way,  resembles  Rabelais 
more  than  the  centre  of  our  circle — a  great  change  took 
place.  Poetry  to'ok  a  tinge  from  the  new  creed,  and  lost 
much  of  its  gayety,  and  that  quality  which  is  called  naivett, 
in  consequence.  Stephen  Hawes,  a  disciple  of  Lydgate, 
wrote  in  1506  "  The  Pastime  of  Pleasure,  or  the  Historic 
of  Graunde  Amoure  and  La  Belle  Pucel."  It  is  an  alle- 

*  Skulls.  t  The  English  Poets. 


CHA  UCER. 


39 


gory,  describing  how  Grande  Amoure  makes  himself 
worthy  of  perfect  love — La  Belle  Pucel.  Hawes  had  no 
small  share  of  the  divine  fire,  though  his  narrative  and 
descriptions  are  often  dull.  Hawes  imitated  Chaucer  less 
than  those  who  preceded  him.  There  is  no  new  ring  in 
his  verse  which  forebodes  the  new  epoch  at  hand.  He 
wrote  at  least  one  couplet  that  deserves  to  live: 

"  For  though  the  daye  be  never  so  long 
At  last  the  belle  ringeth  to  evensong." 

James  I.,  the  author  of  "  The  King's  Quari,''  who,  with 
Dunbar  and  Gawain  Douglas,  reflected  the  light  of 
Chaucer,  was  the  first  Scottish  poet  to  lighten  the  fifteenth 
century.  Dunbar,  a  strong  and  virile  poet,  born  some- 
where in  East  Lothian  between  1450  and  1460,  hearing 
the  mutterings  of  the  coming  storm,  put  his  thoughts  into 
verse  which  stamps  him  as  an  earnest  Catholic,  and  which 
have  been  called  by  a  competent  critic  "  the  finest  devo- 
tional fragments  of  their  age."  Gawain  Douglas,  Bishop 
of  Dunkeld,  and  son  of  the  famous  Eail  of  Angus — "  Beil- 
the-Cat " — who  boasted  that  none  of  his  sons  except  Ga- 
wain could  write,  made  a  translation  of  the  "^neid  " 
which  cannot  die ;  but  he  was  a  dilettante  rather  than  a 
genuine  poet,  and  he  gladly  dropped  the  pen  for  politics, 
which  desertion  ultimately  caused  him  to  be  exiled  to 
London,  where  he  died  in  1522. 

When  Hawes  died,  Chaucer's  daisies  were  left  to  wither 
until  Burns  tried  to  revive  them ;  but  they  were  never  the 
same.  Only  he  who  sang  " si  douce  est  la  marguerite" 
can  worthily,  of  all  poets,  wear  that  symbol  of  freshness 


40  CHA  UCER. 

and  simplicity  which  the  early  poets,  loving  him  well, 
lauded  in  those  "  merrie  "  days  before  men  had  learned  to 
doubt  and  to  resolve  the  Almighty  God  who  made  them 
into  "  the  unknowable." 


LECTURE  III. 

THE  REAL  MEANING  OF  ESTHETICS. 

THE  word  "  aesthetics  "  is  from  the  Greek.  It  describes 
that  science  which  discovers  the  beauty  in  art,  in  litera- 
ture, in  nature,  and  in  life. 

No  word  has  been  more  misused  and  degraded.  When 
Oscar  Wilde  came  hither  he  took  advantage  of  the  Ameri- 
can tendency  to  imitate  the  English  by  carrying  false 
aestheticism  to  its  utmost  length.  He  donned  knee- 
breeches  and  long  hair.  He  told  the  ladies  what  they 
should  wear  with  the  solemnity  of  a  prophet.  He  made 
the  sunflower  and  peacock  feathers  fashionable,  until  the 
rage  for  household  decoration  has  become  so  great  that 
the  very  dust-pans  blossom  in  sunflowers,  and  only  lately 
one  walked  over,  sat  in,  and  looked  at  peacock's  feathers 
until  they  produced  the  effect  of  sea- sickness.  They  be- 
came as  common  as  the  imposing  horsehair-covered 
furniture  of  older  times,  from  which  one  slid  off  with  more 
ease  than  grace.  Just  before  and  just  after  Oscar  Wilde's 
advent,  everybody  talked  of  "aestheticism  v  without  really 
knowing  what  it  meant.  And  to-day  the  word  is  used  by 
the  newspapers  and  by  people  in  ordinary  conversation  as 
if  it  meant  something  eccentric,  strained,  affected. 

Now  it  means  nothing  of  the  kind.     It  has  a  sane  and 


42  THE  REAL   MEANING   OF  ESTHETICS. 

good  meaning,  and  one  which  we  ought  to  understand 
thoroughly  before  we  begin  to  study  literature,  art,  music. 
To  be  an  "aesthete  "  is  generally  understood  to  be  a  long, 
lank  creature, — if  it  be  a  woman, — with  a  straightly  flow- 
ing gown,  of  the  color  of  faded  oak  leaves,  with  a  weird, 
"  intense,"  look  and  a  habit  of  falling  into  "  stained  glass 
attitudes."  Bunthorne,  in  the  opera  of  "  Patience,"  is 
the  type  of  the  male  "  aesthete," — the  man  with  hanging 
locks,  who  wears  a  sunflower  in  his  button-hole,  who  wor- 
ships the  lily,  and  who  tries  to  live  up  to  a  Japanese  teapot. 

This  kind  of  aesthetics  is  very  easily  acquired.  It  is  the 
vulgar  kind.  It  is  well  exemplified  in  one  of  De  Manner's 
pictures  in  the  London  Punch.  "  Who  are  those  queer- 
looking  girls  ?  r>  asks  Mrs.  Jones  of  her  children.  "  They 
are  the  de  Cimabue  Browns,"  responded  Ethel  Jones, 
"they  are  very  aesthetic."  "So  I  thought,"  answers  the 
mother;  ''are  you  acquainted  with  them  ?  "  "  Oh,  no!  " 
cry  the  little  Jones  in  chorus,  "  they  are  intensely  aesthe- 
tic, and  they  stick  out  their  tongues  if  we  only  look  at 
them!  "  One  of  the  first  laws  of  modern  sham  culture  is 
that  the  tongue  shall  be  stuck  out  in  an  aesthetic  manner! 
After  that  the  rest  is  easy. 

To  be  cultured, — I  am  speaking  of  the  sham  culture 
which  is  fashionable  among  superficial  and  hollow-hearted 
people, —  you  must  have  a  cult,  an  intense  worship  of 
something  or  somebody.  The  neophyte  of  culture  may 
select  Donizetti,  or  Dante  Cavalcante,  or  the  piper  that 
played  before  Moses.  He  may  take  his  choice,  and  must 
find  in  his  cult  intense  spiritual  meanings,  poetic  insights. 


THE  REAL   MEANING   OF  AESTHETICS.  43 

grand  possibilities  of  passion  and  color,  infinite  perspec- 
tive and  chiaro-oscuro.  It  is  the  mission  of  culture  to  see 
the  unseeable  and  to  know  the  unknowable.  The  more 
of  the  unseeable  you  see,  and  the  more  of  the  unknowable 
you  know,  the  more  cultured  you  will  be. 

"Culture"  ignores  morality.  To  talk  of  morals  in 
connection  with  art  is  to  place  one's  self  at  once  among  the 
rabble  according  to  the  cultured.  To  the  cultured  the 
Scriptures  are  a  beautiful  poem,  but  nothing  more;  and 
the  religion  of  Christ  a  mosaic  of  color.  The  pretense 
that  drives  the  moral  principles  from  art  in  its  widest 
sense  is  destructive  of  art.  Prometheus  suffering  is  de- 
void of  all  his  grandeur  if  we  forget  the  higher  suffering 
that  surpasses  even  the  pangs  of  his  vulture-torn  heart ; 
and  what  becomes  of  the  inspiration  of  Raffaele  if  we  see 
in  his  masterpieces  only  the  portraits  of  certain  Italian 
women?  It  is  very  well  for  the  cultured  to  talk  of  the 
sublime  "nuances  of  expressiveness  that  intensify  the 
works  of  Fra  Angelico."  But  the  pictures  of  Fra  Angelico 
are  nothing  if  not  religious.  No  artist  would  call  him  an 
anatomist,  or  say  that  he  painted  human  faces ;  and  it  is 
certainly  not  very  consistent  with  that  eternal  fitness  of 
things,  of  which  the  cultured  continually  prate,  to  put  Fra 
Angelico  and  Phidias  on  the  same  plane.  Bric-a-brac  is 
the  basis  of  this  new  movement  which  is  dying  out  already. 
If  the  end  of  life  is  to  be  decoration,  life  is  a  very  poor 
thing ;  and  this  is  the  philosophy  of  culture. 

Men  of  the  highest  modern  culture  look  back  to  pagan- 
ism with  longing.  The  highest  compliment  that  could 


44  THE  REAL   MEANING   OF  AESTHETICS. 

be  paid  to  men  of  this  kind  is  to  tell  them  they  are 
pagans. 

The  pretender  to  the  highest  aesthetics  finds  hidden 
meanings  and  new  beauties  in  bits  of  prose  and  verse, 
which  to  the  uninitiated  seem  without  either  meaning  or 
beauty.  Sometimes  the  thing  chosen  by  the  "  aesthete  " 
for  admiration  is  only  the  mud  of  literature.  To  discover 
animalculse  in  mud  may  be  a  laudable  and  interesting 
work  to  a  man  with  a  microscope ;  but  to  go  into  spasms 
of  admiration  over  the  hidden  beauties  of  mud  and  to 
bespatter  the  roses  of  other  people  is  the  task  of  a  scav- 
enger smitten  with  the  monomania  of  his  trade. 

The  world  must  worship  something,  and  when  it  has 
lost  the  true  God,  it  makes  gods  of  its  own,  and  changes 
its  gods  every  year.  Since  morality  is  nothing  and  beauty 
is  everything,  according  to  the  decree  of  culture,  and  to 
be  beautiful  is  to  be  true  to  one's  self,  it  is  fortunate  that 
the  principles  of  culture  have  not  yet  reached  the  "  masses." 
The  washerwoman,  who  knows  all  the  points  of  Carlo 
Dolce,  and  thinks  Murillo  a  charlatan  in  color,  will  hardly 
endear  herself  to  the  "cultured,"  if  she  forget  the  differ- 
ence between  mine  and  thine ;  and  the  clerk  who  has  his 
"  cult "  may  deem  that  the  necessities  of  the  beautiful — 
that  is,  the  developement  of  all  the  capacities  of  his  nature 
— requires  the  appropriation  of  a  certain  portion  of  his 
employer's  money.  In  cases  like  these,  the  advice  of 
Polonius  should  be  taken  with  a  grain  of  salt,  for  the  cul- 
tured may  be  "  true  "  to  themselves  without  being  true  to 
any  other  man. 


THE  REAL   MEANIXG   OF  .-ESTHETICS.  45 

Culture  did  not  save  the  world.  At  the  height  of  the 
culture  of  the  olden  time,  Christ  came  down  to  save  man- 
kind. Civilization,  like  an  over-ripe  pear,  had  become 
rotten.  We  are  asked  to  accept  the  body  for  the  spirit; 
we  may  grow  ecstatic  over  the  carving  of  a  crucifix,  but 
we  may  not  think  of  the  anguish  of  Him  typified;  we 
may  cry  aloud  at  the  "  effects  "  in  a  picture  by  Guido,  but 
we  must  forget  the  diviner  beauty  of  the  Immaculate 
Mother;  we  may  admire  the  "pose"  and  the  "lights  and 
shades"  in  the  hair  of  St.  Mary  Magdalen,  but  we  may 
not  remember  the  Infinite  Mercy  that  forgave  her!  "  Can 
anything  be  more  false,  more  degrading  than  this  gospel  ? 
Can  anything  be  more  hollow,  more  worthless  than  the 
"  sincerity  "  of  which  the  cultured  talk  ? 

And  yet  how  many  seemingly  thoughtful  people  have 
adopted  the  superficialities  of  this  modern  teaching. 
There  are  to-day  men  who  hold  that  education  and  culture 
will  reform  the  world.  That  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
grammar  and  the  study  of  Shakspeare  would  thin  out  the 
dangerous  classes — that  if  to  these  requisitions  could  be 
added  a  satisfactory  knowledge  of  the  maxims  of  Emerson 
and  Confucius,  the  world  would  become  a  Paradise,  in 
which  everybody  would  "  intelligently  "  revel  in  combina- 
tions of  peacock  blue  and  green,  and  understand  the 
shades  of  workmanship  that  divide  cloissonnt  from  champ 
five.  This  is  the  end  of  culture.  After  that  the — "  un- 
knowable !  " 

A  friend  writes  a  description  of  an  "  aesthete "  of  a 
lately  fashionable  type.  He  says : 


4  6  THE   REAL  MEANING   OF  .-ESTHETICS. 

I  once  knew  a  young  person  full  of  "  aesthetic  "  feeling 
of  the  fashionable  kind  who  worshipped  simplicity.  He 
declared  that  the  melodies  of  Mother  Goose  were  replete 
with  higher  meaning.  "  Oh,"  he  had  a  habit  of  saying, — 
the  "  aesthetic  "  movement  was  then  young, — "  Oh,  if  you 
could  only  learn  to  draw  into  yourself  the  precious  soul- 
fulness  of  simplicity!"  And  then  he  read  in  his  most 
soulful  and  intense  manner: 

"  Old  Mother  Hubbard,  she  went  to  the  cupboard, 
To  get  her  poor  dog  a  bone."      . 

He  often  asked  me  if  I  saw  the  symbolical  and  magnifi- 
cent appropriateness  of  this.  I  was  obliged  to  confess 
that  I  did  not.  "Ah,"  he  said,  "  do  you  not  see  that  old 
Mother  Hubbard, — oh,  sweetly  simple  cognomen! — typi- 
fies the  hope  of  the  heart  seeking  for  refreshment  in  an 
arid  world  ?  She  went  to  the  cupboard  in  the  expecta- 
tion of  finding  nothing  for  her  own  selfish  pleasure.  No, 
— she  wanted  only  the  inexpressible  delight  of  giving 
nourishment  to  a  soul,  typified  by  her  dog, — that  hungered. 
Oh,  exquisite  story !  in  it  I  read  much  that  the  world  can- 
not see.  Surely  the  genius  of  him  that  composed  such  a 
poem  was  stronger  and  simpler  than  Shakspeare's."  He 
found  joyous  and  ineffable  meaning  in  "  Little  Boy  Blue," 
and  he  said  that  "  Old  King  Cole  "  was  a  blast  from  the 
silver  trumpet  of  the  centuries.  I  never  quite  understood 
him.  He  thought  he  was  inspired;  but  most  of  his  friends 
said  that  he  was  crazy.  He  felt  this  very  much,  and  I 
think  that  it  was  to  show  them  they  were  wrong  that  he 


THE  REAL  MEANING   OF  .ESTHETICS.  47 

stopped  being  an  "  aesthete  "  and  went  to  help  his  uncle 
in  a  soap  factory. 

But  before  that,  he  had  some  strange  ways.  We  lived 
in  the  same  house.  He  had  a  picture  of  Dante,  befor  j 
which  he  kept  a  candle  burning  day  and  night.  And  one 
night  when  his  lamp  was  lit  beyond  midnight,  the  landlady 
knocked  and  found  him  with  a  lily  in  his  hand  by  his  open 
window.  He  told  her  that  the  supremest  moment  of  life 
was  when  one  could  see  the  argent  glances  of  the  orb  of 
night  through  the  ambient  perfume  of  stately  lily-flower. 
The  landlady  frequently  said  after  this  that  he  ought  to 
have  a  keeper.  But,  as  I  said,  he  went  into  the  soap 
business.  He  does  not  write  to  me,  because  he  always 
considered  me  a  Philistine — he  called  everybody  who  did 
not  rave  about  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  simple, 
Philistines.  He  once  quoted  a  line  from  a  sonnet,  be- 
ginning: 

"  There  were  no  roses  till  the  first  child  died," 

and  he  said:  "Oh,  essence  of  poetry!  there  you  have 
expressed  a  preciousness  of  exquisite  meaning  as  if  a  silver 
streak  of  dawn  had  darted  into  murk  from  the  empyrean." 
When  I  said  I  meant  just  what  I  said,  he  gave  me  up. 

In  cultivating  a  taste  for  good  books,  you  are  cultivat- 
ing true  aesthetics.  In  cultivating  a  taste  for  good  pictures, 
you  are  likewise  doing  so.  In  preferring  Mendelssohn's 
"  Songs  Without  Words  "  to  the  "  Carlotta  Waltzes,"  you 
are  doing  it  too.  Esthetics  really  means  the  calm  and 
reasonable  seeking  after  the  greatest  things  in  art,  litera- 


48  THE  REAL  MEANING   OF  AESTHETICS. 

ture,  and  music.  It  does  not  mean  straining  after  effect; 
it  does  not  mean  attitudinizing  and  posing  and  wearing 
strange  clothes  just  to  appear  unusual.  All  that  is  vulgar 
for  affectation  and  pretension  are  always  vulgar. 

There  are  Philistines  in  the  world, — people  who  find  no 
good  in  anything  that  is  not  absolutely  useful, — who  in 
the  sunset-tinged  clouds  see  only  banks  of  vapor,  who 
value  heavy  and  rich  furniture  and  surroundings  only  by 
the  show  they  make.  The  female  Philistine  values  dia- 
monds and  sealskin  sacks  more  than  a  good  book,  a  great 
picture,  or  the  power  to  interpret  the  meaning  of  a  Mozart 
or  a  Schubert.  The  male  Philistine  laughs  at  music  and 
poetry  and  art  and  refinement.  He  sneers  at  everything 
he  does  not  understand.  If  he  buys  a  picture,  be  sure  it 
is  because  he  wants  to  boast  of  its  price  to  his  friends. 
And  even  then  he  thinks  more  of  the  triple-gilding  on  the 
frame  than  of  the  genius  of  the  artist.  He  buys  a  dia- 
mond because  it  is  big  and  dear.  He  despises  everything 
that  does  not  represent  money.  There  are  some  poor 
Philistines,  but  they  would  be  three  times  as  vulgar  if  they 
were  rich.  Philistines,  rich  and  poor,  male  and  female, 
are  thoroughly  despicable.  You  see  them  in  large  Ameri- 
can cities  in  the  winter  and  at  watering-places  in  the  sum- 
mer,— the  men  with  immense  diamonds,  the  women  in  the 
latest  fashionable  attire.  They  are  like  nothing  so  much 
as  savages  to  whom  a  traveller  has  given  a  string  of  glass 
beads.  They  are  less  to  be  respected  than  the  savage, 
because  they  live  among  shapes  of  beauty,  yet  they  will 
see  them  not.  Education  with  them  means  accomplish- 


THE  REAL   MEANING   OF  A-.STHF.TICS.    '       49 

ments  that  will  "  show  off."  A  simple  song  well  sung  is 
nothing  to  them.  But  a  bit  from  an  opera,  full  of  cadenzas 
and  trills  and  fiorituri  is  everything,  because  it  seems  to 
mean  the  expenditure  of  so  much  money. 

A  poem  or  a  "chapter  from  a  great  book,  read  with  true 
feeling  and  expression,  is  nothing,  though  it  be  the  per- 
fection of  the  art  that  conceals  art.  No;  they  must  have 
passion  torn  to  tatters.  Elocution,  in  its  worst  sense,  is 
the  only  kind  of  delivery  they  can  admire.  And  then 
there  must  be  sobs,  claspings  of  the  hands,  and  dramatic 
attitudes,  suitable  enough  perhaps  on  the  stage  of  a  third- 
rate  theatre,  but  impossible  to  people  of  nice  taste  in  a 
drawing-room.  To  the  Philistine, 

"A  primrose  by  the  river's  brim 
Only  a  primrose  is  to  him 
And  it  is  nothing  more." 

To  be  what  they  call  an  "  aesthete  "  is  bad ;  to  be  what 
they  call  a  Philistine  is  even  worse.  The  "aesthete,"  after 
all,  can  be  made  to  feel  so  dissatisfied  with  himself  that 
he  will  drop  his  affectations ;  but  the  incorrigible  vice  of 
the  Philistine  is  self-conceit. 

Let  us  hope  that  we  stand  between  the  two.  And  if 
we  do  not,  let  us  hope  that  we  shall  cultivate  such  a  noble 
dissatisfaction  with  ourselves  that  we  shall  be  neither 
aesthetes  nor  Philistines.  If  the  sham  aesthetic  move- 
ment, which  has  now  spent  its  force,  did  no  other  good,  it 
at  least  taught  Americans,  apt  to  be  very  thorough  Philis- 
tines, that  there  is  a  beauty  in  common  things.  It  made 
the  field  daisy  and  the  sunflower  fashionable, — too  fash- 
4 


50  THE  REAL   MEANING   OF  AESTHETICS. 

ionable  for  our  comfort.  But,  nevertheless,  it  taught  us 
that  the  things  that  were  so  plenty  that  they  could  be  had 
for  nothing,  had  a  beauty  of  their  own.  If  the  morning- 
glory  were  a  hothouse  flower,  it  would  seem  as  precious 
as  the  orchids  about  which  the  fashionable  world  is  raving. 

True  aesthetics  is  the  seeking  of  beauty  in  the  life 
around  us.  A  Turkish  writer  has  said :  "  If  I  had  two 
loaves  of  bread,  I  would  give  one  for  a  hyacinth,  for  the 
hyacinth  would  feed  my  soul."  There  is  a  great  deal  in 
that.  Who  that  has  watched  the  bulb  of  the  hyacinth  in 
its  glass,  at  first  a  mere  brown,  clod-like  thing,  change, 
like  a  buried  body  at  the  Resurrection,  to  a  being  replete 
with  life  and  beauty  and  perfume,  does  not  feel  that  it  is 
worth  some  self-denial  ?  The  creature  who  would  not  do 
without  some  luxury  to  buy  a  great  book,  to  read  a  great 
poem,  to  see  a  fine  picture,  to  hear  the  organ  throb  or  the 
voice  of  the  violin  pulsate  under  the  force  of  genius  is 
nothing  but  a  Philistine,  half  a  barbarian,  for  his  best 
faculties  are  paralyzed. 

Esthetics  ought  to  be  a  part  of  our  lives.  It  is  a  part 
of  the  every-day  life  of  the  Christian  Church.  The  Church 
has  drawn  to  tier  service  the  great  masters  of  aesthetics  in 
all  ages.  She  made  Raphael  and  Murillo  possible.  Bot- 
ticelli and  Fra  Angelico  could  not  have  existed  without 
her.  She  created  the  music  of  Palestrina,  inspired  Mozart 
and  forced  Haydn  to  join  her  choirs.  Her  ancient 
stained  glass  is  the  despair  of  modern  artists.  The  carv- 
ing in  wood  in  her  old  cathedrals,  the  unapproachable 
models  for  carvers  of  the  present  day.  Jewels,  lace, 


THE  REAL  MEANING   OF  AESTHETICS.  51 

flowers,  were  drawn  to  her  shrines.  These  sham  aesthetes 
may  praise  paganism  and  make  paeans  in  its  honor,  but 
true  aestheticism  is  essentially  Christian. 

Education  without  aesthetics  is  like  a  sonnet  without 
metre, — a  peach  without  bloom, — a  thrush  without  a 
voice, — a  woman  without  gentle  manners.  Esthetics 
does  not  consist  of  the  painting  of  a  bunch  of  golden  rod 
or  a  sumach  leaf  on  every  available  spot.  The  young 
woman  who  in  search  of  new  worlds  to  conquer  painted 
a  pansy  on  her  father's  bald  head  while  he  was  asleep 
made  a  mistake.  She  probably  found  it  out  when  he 
awoke.  It  consists  in  using  and  seeking  to  use  the  gifts 
God  has  bestowed  on  us  in  order  to  make  our  lives  and 
the  lives  of  our  neighbors  more  pleasant  and  beautiful ;  it 
teaches  us  to  value  the  little  pleasures  of  life;  it  helps  to 
put  sweetness  and  light  into  dark  and  gloomy  days.  I 
use  sweetness  and  light  not  because  Matthew  Arnold  used 
them,  but  because,  when  used  by  a  great  theologian,  cent- 
uries before  Arnold  was  born,  they  expressed  what  I  mean. 

To  be  an  aesthete  in  the  common  meaning  of  the  word 
is  to  be  a  fool.  It  is  to  love  art  because  it  is  fashionable ; 
or  rather  to  pretend  to  love  it.  Not  long  ago,  every  second 
house  showed  a  spinning-wheel  in  its  parlor  decorated 
with  orange,  pink,  or  blue  bows  of  ribbon.  Why  was  the 
old-fashioned  spinning-wheel  given  such  prominence  ? 
Not  because  it  is  beautiful ;  not  because  it  is  old  and  the 
property  of  a  mother  or  grandmother;  for  these  spinning- 
wheels  are  made  by  the  hundred  in  the  furniture  factories, 
but  because  it  suddenly  became  fashionable  to  have 


52  THE  REAL  MEANING   OF  AESTHETICS. 

American  ancestors.  And  the  spinning-wheels  and 
grandfather's  clocks,  bought  by  the  dozen  in  old  farm 
houses  or  made  to  order,  were  put  for  show  in  conspicuous 
and  inappropriate  places.  Now  this  was  false  aesthetics. 
It  was  all  sham.  If  I  have  an  old  cup,  an  old  table,  an 
old  sideboard  which  belonged  to  my  grandmother,  it  is 
right  that  I  should  value  it,  no  matter  how  ugly  it  is.  But 
if  I  buy  an  old  thing,  not  because  it  is  beautiful,  but  be- 
cause it  is  fashionable  to  have  it,  I  become  part  of  a 
sham.  To  buy  an  old  and  beautiful  thing  is  commend- 
able ;  but  if  I  buy  it  because  it  is  fashionable,  not  caring 
whether  it  be  beautiful  or  not,  I  fall  below  the  level  of 
good  taste. 

The  rich  man  who  comes  from  Europe  bringing  with 
him  a  miscellaneous  collection  of  things  which  he  has 
purchased  for  the  reason  that  he  has  been  told  that  they 
are  fine,  and  for  another  reason — that  they  are  dear, — 
is  a  pitiable  object.  In  his  pretense  and  ignorance  he 
reminds  one  of  the  old  Irish  adage:  "A  well-dressed 
man  without  education  is  like  a  boneen  with  a  jewel  in  his 
ear."  A  boneen,  my  friends,  is  a  little  pig ;  perhaps  you 
know  it  in  French  as  cochon.  Riches  cannot  buy  culture 
when  the  fine  instinct  does  not  exist ;  nor  can  they  obtain 
true  aesthetics  through  old  clocks  made  last  year  in  New 
Jersey,  or  somebody  else's  old  spinning-wheels. 

To  be  "  aesthetic,"  in  the  true  sense,  one  must  be  honest 
and  sincere ;  not  afraid  to  confess  that  one  likes  a  simple 
and  common  thing,  and  not  afraid  to  give  one's  reasons 
for  such  a  liking.  For  myself,  I  have  been  in  houses 


THE  REAL   MEAXIXG  OF  ESTHETICS.  53 

which  were  palaces  in  which  I  was  unhappy.  And  I  have 
been  in  little  houses  which  were  anything  but  palaces  and 
I  have  been  very  happy.  The  house  which  is  like  a 
museum,  where  a  flamboyant  copy  of  one  of  Rubens' 
Mary  Magdalens  jostles  the  Mercury  of  Praxiteles,  where 
solferino-colored  cushions  bought  at  a  "fancy"  shop  and 
Japanese  screens,  imitation  armor  and  modern  stained 
glass  make  confusion, — where  a  goblet  carved  by  Cellini, 
a  lion  of  Barye's  and  a  tambourine  painted  with  sunflowers 
repose  side  by  side  near  the  inevitable  spinning-wheel, 
and  where  everything  says:  "All  this  cost  money," — that 
is  a  vulgar  house. 

There  are  probably  more  rich  savages  in  America  than 
anywhere  else,  for  the  reason  that  many  of  our  rich  people 
have  not  yet  learned  that  one  of  the  greatest  privileges 
wealth  gives  them  is  that  of  exercising  good  taste  to  the 
utmost.  A  rich  woman  can  afford  to  be  elegant  and 
simple.  But  too  often  she  does  not  understand  this.  She 
glitters  with  diamonds  in  the  morning  and  walks  in  the 
streets  in  gowns  that,  in  Europe,  no  decent  woman  would 
wear  unless  she  rode  in  a  carriage.  But  this  will  be 
changed  when  we  become  more  civilized ;  when  we  learn 
that  the  possession  of  riches  does  not  make  people  worthy 
of  respect  and  admiration,  but  that  they  must  deserve  it 
in  other  ways. 

With  your  advantages  of  home  training  and  the  incom- 
parable training  you  receive  here,  you  will  be  in  a  posi- 
tion, when  you  enter  the  world,  to  distinguish  between  the 
true  and  the  false  aesthetics. 


54  THE   REAL  MEANING  OF  AESTHETICS. 

In  order  to  make  a  good  confession,  one  must  have 
committed  sin.  In  order  to  acquire  good  taste,  one  must 
know  what  bad  taste  is.  It  is  bad  taste  to  prefer  costli- 
ness to  elegance, — to  imagine  that  costly  things  are  always 
elegant.  It  is  bad  taste  to  admire  things  because  they 
are  fashionable  without  knowing  why.  As  perhaps  you 
discovered  from  my  first  lecture,  I  am  not  an  authority  on 
the  subject  of  ladies'  dress,  but  I  do  know  that  no  young 
lady  with  a  tip-tilted  retrousse, — or,  let  us  put  it  more 
gently, — a  snub  nose  should  wear  a  Grecian  knot.  Why  ? 
Because  this  fashion  of  wearing  the  hair  was  invented  by 
the  Greeks,  a  people  who  were  more  particular  about  the 
form  and  the  fitness  of  things  than  even  the  French,  who 
are  the  real  modern  Greeks  in  spirit.  You  will  find  in 
the  famous  head  of  the  Clytie  an  example  of  this  style  of 
hair-dressing  now  so  fashionable.  You  will  observe,  how- 
ever, that  she  has  not  a  nose  "tip-tilted  like  a  flower." 
The  Grecian  knot  was  invented  to  accompany  the  Grecian 
nose.  And  the  young  lady  with  a  Roman  or  a  retrousst 
nose  who  adopts  the  Grecian  knot  because  it  is  the  fashion 
errs  against  perfect  taste.  For  the  aesthetics  of  dress  are 
worth  considering  if  you  consider  dress  at  all.  And  even 
in  small  things  it  is  best  to  be  correct. 

It  is  bad  taste,  when  you  are  permitted  to  hear  good 
singing,  to  admire  and  to  think  of  the  costumes  of  the 
prima  donna,  or  at  a  fine  play  to  consider  the  question 
whether  the  actress's  dresses  are  by  Worth,  or  not,  as  of 
as  much  importance  as  her  delivery  of  the  words.  It 
seems  to  me  to  be  bad  taste  not  to  choose  religious 


THE   REAL   MEANING   OF  AESTHETICS.  55 

pictures  and  statues  with  some  regard  to  the  rules  of  art. 
It  is  a  large  part  of  the  pretentious  aesthetics  of  our  time 
to  dwell  more  on  the  effect  than  on  the  cause, — to  think 
more  of  the  attitude  of  the  Mater  Dolorosa  of  Carlo  Dolce 
than  of  the  ineffable  woe  her  face  expresses, — to  rave 
about  the  opaline  color  of  Fra  Angelico's  angels  and  to 
think  nothing  of  the  fervent  religious  spirit  which  created 
them.  But  some  of  us  Catholics  are  prone  to  go  to  the 
other  extreme.  The  gaudiest  religious  print  is  good 
enough  for  us.  And  while  we  revere  unspeakably  the 
Passion  of  Our  Lord,  we  keep  in  our  oratories  crucifixes 
whose  workmanship  the  most  untutored  Tyrolean  peasant 
would  not  tolerate.  I  have  seen  pictures  of  Our  Blessed 
Lady  which  were  positively  sacrilegious.  While  we  would 
not  endure  for  a  moment  in  our  parlors  a  picture  of  Wash- 
ington with  a  magenta  coat  and  a  green  hat,  and  a  figure 
out  of  drawing,  we  contentedly  put  a  figure  of  St.  Joseph 
painted  in  the  crudest  and  most  vulgar  manner  in  our 
oratories.  And  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  we  possess  a 
thousand  exquisite  and  poetical  conceptions, — that  all  the 
power  of  the  genius  of  the  most  artistic  age  of  the  world 
has  burst  forth  in  praise  of  Christ,  His  Mother  and  the 
Saints.  While  the  "  aesthetes  "  buy  our  old  altar  pieces 
for  seemingly  fabulous  amounts  of  money,  while  their 
drawing-rooms  and  studies  are  filled  with  copies  of  Bot- 
ticelli, Raphael,  Guido  and  Overbeck,  we  are  content  with 
wretched  prints  and  statues  which  make  the  judicious 
grieve.  There  is  one  woman  in  all  this  land  who  has,  in 
spite  of  the  vulgarity  and  ignorance  around  her,  preached 
ardently  the  aesthetics  of  religion. 


5 6  THE  REAL   MEANING   OF  ESTHETICS. 

This  is  Miss  Eliza  Allen  Starr.  Her  name  deserves 
reverence. 

There  are  many  houses  throughout  this  country  where 
true  agstheticism  is  understood ;  where  serenity  and  peace 
dwell ;  where  the  spirit  of  beauty  is  cultivated ;  where  the 
inmates  have  learned  that  costliness  is  not  the  measure 
of  enjoyment.  These  are  not  generally  the  homes  of  the 
rich,  nor  the  homes  of  the  very  poor.  It  is  in  the  happy 
medium  that  one  generally  finds  the  truest  refinement  and 
culture.  I  call  to  mind  one  now.  Its  centre  is  the  sitting- 
room  of  an  old-fashioned  house  in  the  country.  There 
are  always  good  books  on  the  centre-table.  The  mother 
and  daughters  know  "The  Following  of  Christ"  by  heart. 
The  few  pictures  are  copies  of  old  painters, — good  prints, 
and  photographs.  On  the  open  piano,  one  sees,  not  the 
"  Lullaby  "  from  Erminie  or  a  Valse  Brilliante  by  nobody 
knows  who,  but  music  showing  that  the  brain  and  heart 
have  been  brought  into  practice  as  well  as  the  fingers. 
And  the  people  there  are  content.  The  lily  and  the  tulip 
from  their  garden,  the  daisy  and  the  violet  from  their 
meadows  yield  them  renewed  pleasure  every  year.  They 
try  to  have  only  beautiful  things  around  them,  and  they 
succeed,  though  they  do  not  search  the  old  curiosity  shops 
for  Louis  Sixteenth  cabinets  or  Henry  Second  vases,  and  I 
doubt  whether  they  know  the  difference  between  the  ware 
of  Satsuma  and  the  ware  of  Limoge. 

It  is  true  that  the  history  of  each  kind  of  pottery  is  in 
part  the  history  of  the  people  who  made  it.  From  that 
point  of  view  it  is  interesting.  The  Wedgewood  ware 


THE  REAL  MEAXIXG   OF  AESTHETICS. 


57 


represents  a  crystallization  of  enduring  and  well-directed 
human  effort,  as  you  can  see  by  reference  to  Samuel 
Smiles'  "  Self-Help  "  and  how  much  wonderful  and  mag- 
nificent history  is  suggested  by  a  carved  cup  of  Benvenuto 
Cellini's.  But  when  people  begin  to  make  the  real  pur- 
poses of  life  subservient  to  decoration, — to  consider  the 
fold  of  Oriental  drapery,  the  marking  of  a  teapot  as  of 
more  importance  than  virtuous  and  cheerful  living,  it  were 
better  for  them  if  all  the  pottery  in  the  world  had  suffered 
the  fate  of  the  great  Alexandrian  Library  and  been  burned 
in  its  own  kilns. 

This  false  aesthetics  is  a  craze.  I  remember  a  dinner 
at  which  one  of  the  apostles  of  this  very  changeable  relig- 
ion was  present.  He  was  an  Englishman  and  an  Oxford 
man.  And  the  humble  Americans  waited  anxiously  for 
him,  and  the  poor  hostess  went  about  with  red  flushes  on 
her  cheeks,  fearing  that  everything  would  not  be  up  to 
his  lordship's  expectations;  for  it  was  rumored  that  he 
once  left  a  dinner-table  because  the  lights  were  not 
changed  with  every  course ;  and  that  he  had  no  appetite 
unless  the  proper  music  was  played  while  he  dined.  It 
was  said  that,  by  some  mistake,  the  band  had  once  in- 
dulged in  a  galop  during  the  serving  of  the  soup.  This 
had  given  him  a  fit  of  dyspepsia  from  which  he  never  re- 
covered. The  house  was  decorated  with  the  choicest  bits 
of  ceramic.  The  talk  was  of  the  most  "aesthetic"  kind: 
"  Oh,"  one  lady  said,  "  how  intense, — how  preciously  and 
utterly  intense  is  the  unwritten  poetry  of  the  unknown 
poet  who  never  even  murmurs  the  spontaneous,  burning 


5 8  THE   REAL   MEANING   OF  AESTHETICS. 

thoughts  that  foam  within  him ! "  I  was  easily  embar- 
rassed then,  so  I  said:  "  Yes,  ma'am  " — which  was  not  the 
proper  thing  at  all.  When  the  great  aesthete  came,  the 
ladies  all  gathered  around  him.  "  How  intense ! "  they 
said,  "how  quite  too  utterly  intense!  "  And  one  of  them 
put  a  wreath  of  lilies  on  his  head  which  hung  down  over 
his  left  eye.  When  the  dinner  had  begun,  he  disappointed 
everybody  by  asking  for  roast  beef  and  devouring  three 
large  slices.  He  shocked  the  hostess  by  saying,  "  when  a 
man's  hungry,  he  wants  something  more  than  ambrosia 
and  nightingale's  tongues,  doesn't  he?"  But  the  atti- 
tudinizing, the  straining  after  effect,  the  insincere  nonsense 
talked  by  these  people  while  they  waited  for  the  "  aesthe- 
tic "  splendor  to  dawn,  showed  how  hollow  and  worthless 
their  sham  aesthetics  was. 

There  can  be  no  true  beauty  in  life  unless  there  is  good- 
ness as  a  foundation  for  it.  True  aesthetics  must  mean 
serenity  and  cheerfulness.  It  is  really  aesthetic  to  make 
the  best  of  everything, — to  look  on  the  bright  side, — to 
adorn  the  seamy  side  of  life  with  such  ornaments  as  are 
near  you.  The  old  Turkish  writer's  saying  comes  back 
again :  "  If  I  had  only  two  loaves  of  bread,  I  would  ex- 
change one  for  a  hyacinth." 

The  highest  authority  says  that  we  cannot  live  by 
bread  alone.  And  again :  "  Look  at  the  lilies  of  the  field." 
We  cannot  neglect  the  beauty  of  common  things  without 
losing  much  that  is  good  in  life.  If  we  want  to  find  the 
loveliest  example  of  a  household  frugal,  simple,  contented, 
serene,  let  us  glance  back  at  that  of  Nazareth.  There  we 


THE  REAL  MEANING   OF  ESTHETICS.  59 

see  the  Virgin  Mother — "  blessed  among  women  " — calmly, 
yet  with  joy  singing  in  her  heart,  doing  her  household 
duties.  The  lily  of  the  valley  and  the  roses  of  Sharon 
bloom  around  her.  She  did  not  live  amid  Persian  stuffs 
or  the  jewels  of  Solomon  or  ancient  and  curious  vases, 
and  yet  she  lived  the  highest  and  most  beautiful  of  lives. 

The  aesthetics  of  literature  does  not  mean  what  this  new 
school  would  have  us  believe.  We  shall  not  find  beauty 
and  consolation  in  authors  whose  only  merit  is  the  refin- 
ing of  trifles  or  the  deification  of  pagan  vice.  Swinburne 
and  Rossetti,  Villers  and  Rabelais,  Gautier  and  Baudelaire 
can  only  be  adored  by  men  of  perverted  taste.  As  the 
drinker  of  whiskey  cannot  enjoy  the  flavor  of  food  or 
liquid  less  fiery,  so  our  aesthetes,  partially  from  perverted 
taste,  partially  from  a  desire  to  be  perverted  and  singular, 
affect  a  liking  for  what  no  healthy-minded  person  can  like. 

The  aesthetic  sneer  at  "  The  Rainy  Day  "  of  Longfellow, 
at  "The  Lost  Chord"  of  Adelaide  Procter,  at  much  of 
the  poetry  of  Wordsworth,  and  at  some  of  the  poetry  of 
Tennyson.  They  find  that  Sir  Walter  Scott  is  not  "  utter  " 
enough ;  they  can  endure  no  music  with  a  melody  in  it, 
no  picture  with  a  story  in  it.  They  pretend  that  a  mut- 
ton chop  eaten  from  an  ordinary  plate  is  hateful  to  them. 
And  I  have  never  believed  that.  But  let  us  be  content  to 
know  what  the  science  and  art  of  true  aesthetics  mean. 
Let  us  not  be  disturbed  by  these  new  English  "  fads." 
Let  us  like  what  we  have  good  reason  for  liking.  The 
fonder  we  are  of  our  homes  and  our  country,  the  more 
truly  "aesthetic"  we  shall  be.  I  can  forgive  the  adora- 


60  THE  REAL  MEANING   OF  AESTHETICS. 

tion  of  the  sunflower  and  the  field  daisy  because  they  are 
American  flowers.  Let  us  practise  the  art  of  aesthetics  by 
trying  to  find  and  to  point  out  the  beauty  that  springs  from 
American  soil  and  permeates  American  literature.  Do 
not  let  us  become  vulgar  by  waiting  with  open  mouths  and 
beating  hearts  for  the  latest  British  utterances.  Until  we 
know  the  beauties  of  our  own  land,  let  us  not  go  abroad. 
If  we  do,  we  deserve  to  be  counted  among  that  vulgar 
herd  who  "go  to  Europe  to  complete  an  education  never 
begun  at  home." 


LECTURE   IV. 

SOUTHWELL,  CRASHAW,  AND  HABINGTON. 

ALL  poets  have  longed  for  clearer,  more  exact,  and  fer- 
vent expression  of  their  inspiration  than  any  earthly  lan- 
guage can  give,  and  all  poets  have  felt  that  the  highest 
poetry  here  falls  short  of  that  sublime  poetry  which  their 
boldest  thoughts  only  see  as  through  a  glass  darkly.  No 
poet  seems  to  have  known  this  longing  and  this  limitation 
better  than  Robert  Southwell.  To  him  poetry  brought  no 
consolation,  as  we  may  judge  from  his  poems.  To  him  it 
brought  no  false  quietism,  which  both  Wordsworth  and 
Cowper  seem  to  take  for  consolation.  He  burned  to 
manifest  the  divine  love  that  lived  within  him ;  and,  in  the 
usual  expression  of  poetry,  he  cried  out.  Southwell  was 
a  priest  whom  religion  forced  to  be  a  poet ;  it  is  doubtful 
whether  either  Habington  or  Southwell  would  have  been 
poets  had  they  not  been  spurred  on  to  ardent  expression 
by  the  motive  which  religion  gives  to  devout  souls.  This 
is  true,  perhaps,  in  a  lesser  degree  of  Habington  and  Cra- 
shaw  than  of  Southwell.  The  former,  however,  would 
have  been  only  dilettanti,  had  not  religion  given  them 
clearness  and  strength.  All  three  were,  as  another  writer 
has  expressed  it  of  one  of  them,  not  merely  poets  who 
happened  to  be  Catholics,  they  were  poets  and  Catholics ; 


62      SOUTHWELL,  CRASH  A  W,  AND  HABINGTON. 

and  their  religion  and  inspiration  were  so  near  each  other 
that  it  is  difficult  to  tell  which  bade  them  sing. 

No  man  can  read  the  story  of  Robert  Southwell's  life 
without  a  feeling  of  reverential  admiration.  His  life  and 
his  poetry  are  alike  above  our  ordinary  sympathy,  for  he 
was  a  martyr,  and  a  poet  whose  theme  was  always  of 
sacred  things.  Martyr  and  poet  are  epithets  so  grand 
that  when  a  man  deserves  them  he  becomes  superhuman. 
For  this  reason  the  poetry  of  Southwell  will  never  become 
popular.  His  poems  had  some  vogue  in  England,  not  be- 
cause the  public  really  preferred  strength  and  real  passion 
to  the  fashionable  word-building  and  quaint  conceits  which 
passed  for  poetry,  or  felt  his  power  as  a  poet,  but  because 
the  heroism  and  pathos  of  his  death  attracted  popular 
sympathy  to  his  work.  Even  his  enemies  admitted  that 
his  death  was  worthy  of  an  ancient  Roman ;  and  zeal,  in- 
flexible faith,  and  heroic  endurance  were  not  without  honor 
even  in  days  when  the  politicians  had  found  it  wise  to  lead 
the  English  nation  to  regard  a  Catholic  priest  as  worse 
than  a  leper. 

Southwell  did  not  think  much  of  poetry  as  an  art; 
but  this  fault  was  not  uncommon  among  the  Elizabethan 
poets.  His  richness  of  expression  is  unbounded,  unhus- 
banded.  Nature,  as  nature,  had  no  message  for  him. 
Nature  was  God's  footstool ;  of  the  myriad  voices,  of  the 
myriad  phases  in  earth  and  heaven,  he  took  no  note  for 
themselves.  The  rose  and  the  lily  were  for  him  in  their 
best  place  before  the  tabernacle,  and  the  breath  of  the 
new-mown  fields  was  less  sweet  to  him  than  the  incense 


SOUTHWELL,  CRASHA  W,  AXD  HABINGTOX.      63 

that  wreathed  the  pillars  of  a  church.  Rhythm  and  rhyme 
were  fetters  to  his  thought  rather  than  helps  to  it.  Verse 
in  his  hands  was  the  nearest  earthly  approach  to  that 
divine  expression  which  the  seraphs  have ;  it  was  powerless 
to  hold  the  fervor  of  a  heart  that  burned  with  desire  for 
union  with  our  Lord.  "  St.  Peter's  Complaint  " — the  most 
worthy  expression  of  his  genius — is  an  evidence  of  this. 

Southwell  doubtless  considered  Shakspeare's  contem- 
porary poem  of  "  Lucrece  " — if,  indeed,  he  read  it — as 
Ulysses  looked  upon  the  sirens.  Professor  Hales,  who 
contributes  a  brief  but  appreciative  notice  of  Southwell  to 
Tlie  English  Poets,  points  out  the  striking  resemblance,  in 
a  literary  way,  between  "St.  Peter's  Complaint"  and 
"Lucrece."  In  each  poem  there  is  an  overpowering 
wealth  of  imagery,  a  crowding  of  illustration,  a  luxuriance 
of  thought,  and  a  minuteness  of  narration.  "  St.  Peter's 
Complaint "  is  the  stronger  poern,  not  only  in  its  motive 
but  in  treatment.  "  It  is  undoubtedly,"  says  Prof.  Hales, 
"  the  work  of  a  mind  of  no  ordinary  copiousness,  often 
embarrassed  by  its  own  riches,  and  so  expending  them 
with  a  prodigal  carelessness."  But  it  is  something  more 
than  this.  It  is  the  outburst  of  a  heart  burning  with  divine 
love  and  poetic  fire ;  it  is  unique  in  literature.  It  is  not 
artistic ;  it  contains  little  sweetness,  no  sympathy  with  the 
humanity  of  the  saint,  which  a  modern  poet  would  have 
made  the  most  prominent  part  of  the  "  Complaint."  The 
silence  of  a  Stylites  only  could  better  express  the  penitence 
of  such  a  soul  as  Southwell  portrays.  The  poem  is  long, 
consisting  of  one  hundred  and  forty  six-line  stanzas. 
These  are  striking  and  beautiful: 


64      SOUTHWELL,  CRASIIA  W,  AND  HABINGTON. 

' '  Like  solest  swan  that  swims  in  silent  deep, 
And  never  sings  but  obsequies  of  death, 

Sing  out  thy  plaints,  and  sole  in  secret  weep, 
In  suing  pardon  spend  thy  perjured  breath  ; 

Attire  thy  soul  in  sorrow's  mourning  weed, 
And  at  thine  eyes  let  guilty  conscience  bleed. 

"  Still  in  the  'lembic  of  thy  doleful  breast 

Those  bitter  fruits  that  from  thy  sins  do  grow  ; 

For  fuel,  self-accusing  thoughts  be  best  ; 
Use  fear  as  fire,  the  coals  let  penance  blow  ; 

And  seek  none  other  quintessence  but  tears, 
That  eyes  may  shed  what  entered  at  thine  ears. 

"  When,  traitor  to  the  Son,  in  Mother's  eyes, 
I  shall  present  my  humble  suit  for  grace, 

What  blush  can  paint  the  shame  that  shall  arise 
Or  write  my  inward  feelings  on  my  face  ? 

Might  she  the  sorrow  with  the  sinner  see, 
Though  I'm  despised,  my  grief  might  pitied  be. 

' '  But  ah !  how  can  her  ears  my  speech  endure, 

Or  scent  my  breath  still  reeking  hellish  steam  ? 

Can  Mother  like  what  did  the  Son  abjure, 
Or  heart  deflowered  a  virgin's  love  redeem  ? 

The  Mother  nothing  loves  the  Son  doth  loathe  ; 
Ah!  loathsome  wretch,  detested  of  them  both. 

"  Weep  balm  and  myrrh,  you  sweet  Arabian  trees, 
With  purest  gems  perfume  and  pearl  your  rine  ; 

Shed  on  your  honey-drops,  your  busy  bees, 
I,  barren  plant,  must  weep  unpleasant  brine  : 

Hornets,  I  hear,  salt  drops  their  labor  plies, 
Sucked  out  of  sin,  and  shed  by  showering  eyes. 

"  If  love,  if  loss,  if  fault,  if  spotted  fame, 

If  danger,  death,  if  wrath  or  wreck  of  weal, 

Entitle  eyes  true  heirs  to  earned  blame, 
That  due  remorse  in  such  events  conceal : 

That  want  of  tears  might  well  enroll  my  name 
As  chiefest  saint  in  calendar  of  shame." 


SO  U  TH  WELL,  CRA  SNA  W,  AMD  HA  BING  TON.      6  5 

These  quotations  give  only  a  slight  idea  of  the  beauty 
and  richness  of  the  poem.  It  is  over-wrought,  and  the 
constant  alliteration  detracts  somewhat  from  the  simplicity 
of  statement  which  would  otherwise  have  strengthened 
many  of  the  lines.  One  cannot  help  speculating  upon  the 
heights  which  Southwell  might  have  reached  in  the  art  of 
poetry,  had  he  not  suffered  death  at  the  age  of  thirty-three 
— at  the  age  when  he  desired  most  to  die,  if  God  willed 
it,  as  bringing  him  nearer  that  sublime  Model  of  his  life 
whom  he  loved  so  well  to  intimate.  It  is  hardly  possible 
that  he  would  have  written  much,  even  had  he  lived  to 
remain  in  England.  The  life  of  a  priest  in  the  days  of 
"  good  queen  Bess  "  had  little  leisure  in  it  for  dalliance 
with  a  muse  that  does  not  love  turmoil.  And,  moreover, 
theology  is  not  the  most  tender  nurse  of  the  poetic  art. 
Theology  is  apt  to  restrict  its  steps  and  hold  it  in  leading- 
strings,  that  it  may  not  forget  men's  souls  in  plucking 
flowers  for  the  sake  of  their  perfume.  Dante,  it  is  true, 
was  a  theologian,  and  Milton  probably  thought  that  he 
was  one ;  but  Southwell  was  a  priest,  and  the  holy  office 
cannot  accept  a  divided  heart.  It  is  quite  probable  that 
in  "  St.  Peter's  Complaint "  he  reached  his  highest  water- 
mark in  poetry.  It  may  have  been  in  him,  as  it  was  in 
the  author  of  "  Lucrece,"  to  write  a  poem  that  would  move 
the  hearts  of  all  the  ages  to  come ;  but  to  him,  as  a  priest 
and  poet,  fame  was  nothing.  The  soul  nearest  him  was 
more  important  to  him  than  the  admiration  of  centuries. 
Southwell  is  one  of  a  very  few  poets  who  never  felt  the 
touch  of  earthly  passion  or  of  that  sentiment,  half -human, 
5 


66      SOUTHWELL,  CRASH  AW.  AND  HABINGTON. 

half-divine,  that  we  call  love.  Even  Crashaw's  address  to 
his  mythical  mistress,  impersonal  as  it  is,  expresses  a  feel- 
ing which  Southwell  never  experienced.  He  lent  no  ear 
to  the  Circe  who  transformed  so  many  of  his  brother  poets 
into  a  semblance  of  bestiality.  As  a  priest,  he  felt  the 
sacredness  of  his  place  above  angels ;  and  there  is  no  sign 
of  that  conflict  between  the  sensuous  and  the  spiritual  to 
which  poetic  temperaments  seem  especially  prone.  In 
this  Southwell  offers  a  striking  contrast  to  a  rare  and  deK- 
cate  modern  genius,  Maurice  de  Guerin,  who,  likewise  a 
Catholic  and  with  a  strong  instinct  toward  the  entire 
consecration  of  himself  to  God,  shattered  himself  in  a 
struggle  between  the  sensuousness  of  nature  and  the 
asceticism  which  he  felt  in  Christianity.  But  Southwell 
was  the  highest  type  of  a  Catholic.  This  fact,  from  the 
ordinary  literary  point  of  view,  doubtless  restricted  his 
scope  as  a  poet;  but  from  the  ordinary  literary  point  of 
view,  the  manner  is  above  the  thing,  the  art  of  Gautier 
above  the  fervor  of  Southwell,  and  human  love  is  only 
worthy  of  the  poet's  song.  Southwell  is  none  the  less  a 
poet  that  he  sang  to  God  alone.  The  texture  of  his  work 
is  stained  in  the  Blood  of  the  Sacred  Heart,  not  iridescent 
with  the  changing  hues  that  arise  from  corruption.  "  Love's 
Plot,"  which  is  not  inappropriate  here,  is  full  of  a  charac- 
teristic sententiousness  that  shows  his  firm  poetical  grasp 
by  never  becoming  prosy  or  commonplace : 

"  Love  mistress  is  of  many  minds, 

Yet  few  know  whom  they  serve  : 
They  reckon  least  how  little  love 
Their  service  doth  deserve. 


SOUTHWELL,  CRASH  AW,  AND  IIABINGTOX.      67 

"  The  will  she  robbeth  from  the  wit, 

The  sense  from  reason's  lore  ; 
She  is  delightful  in  the  rind, 
Corrupted  in  the  core. 

"  She  shroudeth  vice  in  virtue's  veil 

Pretending  good  in  ill ; 
She  offereth  joy,  affordeth  grief, 
A  kiss  when  she  doth  kill. 

"A  honey  flower  reigns  from  her  lips, 

Sweet  lights  shine  in  her  face  ; 
She  hath  the  blush  of  virgin's  mind, 
The  mind  of  viper's  race. 

"  She  makes  thee  seek,  yet  fear  to  find  ; 

To  find,  but  not  enjoy  ; 
In  many  frowns  some  gliding  smiles 
She  yields,  to  more  annoy. 

"  Like  winter  rose  and  summer  ice, 

Her  joys  are  still  untimely  ; 

Before  her  hope,  behind  remorse, 

Fair  first,  in  fine  unseemly. 

"  Moods,  passions,  fancies,  jealous  fits, 

Attend  upon  her  train  ; 
She  yieldeth  rest  without  repose, 
A  heaven  in  hellish  pain. 

"  Her  house  is  sloth,  her  door  deceit, 

And  slippery  hopes  her  stairs  ; 
Unbashfal  boldness  bids  her  guests, 
And  every  vice  appears. 

"  Her  sleep  in  sin  doth  end  in  wrath, 

Remorse  rings  her  awake  ; 
Death  calls  her  up,  shame  drives  her  out, 
Despairs  her  upshot  make. 

*'  Plough  not  the  seas,  sow  not  the  sands, 

Leave  off  your  idle  pain  ; 
Seek  other  mistress  for  your  minds — 
Love's  service  is  in  vain." 


68      SOUTHWELL,  CRASH  A  /F,  AND  HABINGTON. 

"Times  go  by  Turns"  and  "The  Burning  Babe"  are 
already  too  well  known  to  Catholics  to  need  reproduction. 
It  is  strange  that  his  "  Child  of  my  Choice  " — a  tender  and 
fervent  address  to  the  Child  Jesus — has  not  found  its  way 
into  our  hymn  books. 

Southwell  was  not  the  only  poet  who  suffered  on  the 
scaffold.  The  gallant  Surrey  had  preceded  him,  and  in 
after-years  Andre  Chenier  died  by  the  hand  of  the  execu- 
tioner ;  but  no  poet  in  modern  times  died  the  glorious 
death  of  Southwell.  The  deaths  of  Surrey  and  Chenier 
were  as  mournful  sunsets ;  his  a  glorious  sunrise.  Like  his 
own  "  solest  swan,"  his  last  songs  in  prison  were  sweetest, 
for  he  had  already  pierced,  with  a  martyr's  vision,  the 
splendors  of  heaven. 

From  his  childhood  he  was  fervently  religious.  He  was 
the  third  son  of  Richard  Southwell,  a  Catholic  gentleman 
of  Norfolk.  Robert  was  born  at  his  father's  seat,  Hors- 
ham,  St.  Faith's,  about  the  year  1562.  There  is  a  tradi- 
tion to  the  effect  that  a  gypsy  woman  made  an  attempt  to 
steal  him,  in  the  hope  of  gain ;  and  he  never  ceased,  it  is 
said,  to  show  his  gratitude  to  God  for  having  saved  him 
from  a  semi-savage  and  vagrant  life.  Although  the  South- 
well family  was  Catholic,  Richard  Southwell  never  per- 
mitted his  religion  to  stand  in  the  way  of  his  preferment ; 
and  in  those  days  Catholics  could  obtain  worldly  advantage 
only  by  the  sacrifice  of  principle.  Robert's  tendency 
towards  the  religious  life  was  so  strong  that  he  was  sent 
to  Douay  to  be  educated  for  the  priesthood,  and  from 
there  to  Paris.  This  fact  speaks  well  for  his  father,  who 


SOUTHWELL,  CRASHA  IV,  AND  HABINGTON.      69 

risked  much  by  having  him  educated  abroad.  Robert 
went  from  Paris  to  Rome,  where  he  was  received  into  the 
Society  of  Jesus.  Early  in  the  year  1585  he  applied  for 
permission  to  return  to  England.  The  thought  of  souls 
perishing  for  the  sacred  nourishment  that  he  could  give 
them  filled  him  with  a  solicitude  that  was  agony,  and  he 
longed  for  the  crown  of  martyrdom.  The  peril  that  faced 
him  was  not  vague.  "Any  papist,"  according  to  the  statute 
27  Elizabeth  c.  2,  "born  in  the  dominions  of  the  crown  of 
England,  who  should  come  over  thither  from  beyond  the 
sea  (unless  driven  by  stress  of  weather,  and  tarrying  only 
a  reasonable  time),  or  should  be  in  England  three  days 
without  conforming  and  taking  the  oath,  should  be  guilty 
of  high  treason."  Southwell  knew  that  a  Jesuit  was 
doubly  obnoxious  to  the  herd  of  Englishmen  who  blindly 
followed  time-serving  leaders;  he  knew,  too,  that  if  dis- 
covered he  would  be  hanged,  drawn,  and  quartered.  He 
did  not  shrink.  Perhaps  he  reverently  repeated  the  words 
of  his  "  Burning  Babe :  " 

"  Love  is  the  fire  and  sighs  the  smoke, the  ashes  shame  and  scorn, 
The  fuel  Justice  layeth  on,  and  Mercy  blows  the  coals  ; 
The  metal  in  this  furnace  wrought  are  men's  defiled  souls  ; 
For  which,  as  now  on  fire  I  am,  to  work  them  to  their  good, 
So  will  I  melt  into  a  bath,  to  wash  them  in  my  blood." 

Southwell's  letter  to  his  father,  which  he  wrote  soon 
after  his  return  to  England,  shows  that  the  poet  who  wrote 
"  St.  Peter's  Complaint "  might  as  easily  have  spoken  an 
apologia  before  the  despots  who  in  England  imitated  the 
persecutions  of  Diocletian  in  the  name  of  "reformation." 


70      SOUTHWELL,  CRASH  A  W,  AND  HABINGTON. 

The  letter  is  full  of  that  earnestness  and  faith  which  were 
ingrained  in  this  remarkable  man : 

"  Who  hath  more  interest  in  the  grape  than  he  who  planted  the 
vine  ?  Who  more  right  to  the  crop  than  he  who  sowed  the  corn  ?  or 
where  can  the  child  owe  so  great  service  as  to  him  to  whom  he  is  in- 
debted for  his  very  life  and  being  ?  With  young  Tobias,  I  have 
travelled  far,  and  brought  home  a  freight  of  spiritual  substance  to 
enrich  you,  and  medicinal  receipts  against  your  ghostly  maladies.  I 
have,  with  Esau,  after  a  long  toil  in  pursuing  a  long  and  painful 
chase,  returned  with  the  full  prey  you  were  wont  to  love,  desiring 
thereby  to  insure  your  blessing.  I  have,  in  this  general  famine  of  all 
true  and  Christian  food,  with  Joseph,  prepared  abundance  of  the 
bread  of  angels  for  the  repast  of  your  soul.  And  now  my  desire  is 
that  my  drugs  may  cure  you,  my  prey  delight  you,  and  my  provision 
feed  you,  by  whom  I  have  been  cured,  enlightened,  and  fed  myself  ; 
that  your  courtesies  may,  in  part,  be  countervailed,  and  my  duty,  in 
some  sort,  performed.  Despise  not,  good  sire,  the  youth  of  your  son, 
neither  deem  your  God  measureth  his  endowments  by  number  of 
years.  Hoary  senses  are  often  couched  under  youthful  locks,  and 
some  are  riper  in  the  spring  than  others  in  the  autumn  of  their  age. 
God  chose  not  Esau  himself,  nor  his  eldest  son,  but  young  David  to 
conquer  Goliath  and  to  rule  his  people  :  not  the  most  aged  person, 
but  Daniel  the  most  innocent  youth,  delivered  Susannah  from  the  in- 
iquity of  the  judges.  Christ  at  twelve  years  of  age  was  found  in  the 
temple,  questioning  with  the  greatest  doctors.  A  true  Elias  can  con- 
ceive that  a  little  cloud  may  cast  a  large  and  abundant  shower  ;  and 
the  Scripture  teaches  us  that  God  unveileth  to  little  ones  that  which 
He  concealeth  from  the  wisest  sages.  His  truth  is  not  abashed  by 
the  minority  of  the  speaker,  for  out  of  the  mouths  of  infants  and 
sucklings  He  can  perfect  His  praises.  Timothy  was  young,  and  yet 
a  principal  pastor  ;  St.  John  a  youth,  and  yet  an  apostle  ;  yea,  the 
angels  by  appearing  in  youthful  semblance,  gave  us  a  proof  that 
many  glorious  gifts  may  be  shrouded  under  tender  shapes.  All  this 
I  say,  not  to  claim  any  privileges  surmounting  the  rate  of  usual  abili- 
ties, but  to  avoid  all  touch  of  presumption  in  advising  my  elders  ; 
seeing  that  it  hath  the  warrant  of  Scripture,  the  testimony  of  exam- 
ple, and  sufficient  ground  both  in  grace  and  nature. 

"  If  you,"  says  this  earnest  poet,  "  if  you  were  stretched  on  your 
departing  bed,  burdened  with  the  heavy  load  of  your  former  tres- 


SO  UTH  WELL,  CRA  SfIA  IV,  A ND  HA BING  TON.      7 1 

passes,  and  gored  with  the  sting  of  a  festered  conscience  ;  if  you  felt 
the  hand  of  death  grasping  your  heart-strings,  and  ready  to  make  the 
rueful  divorce  between -body  and  soul ;  if  you  lay  panting  for  breath 
and  bathed  in  a  cold  and  fatal  sweat,  wearied  with  struggling  against 
the  pangs  of  death,  oh!  how  much  you  would  give  for  one  hour  for 
repentance!  at  what  rate  you  would  value  one  day's  contrition !  Worlds 
would  then  be  worthless  in  respect  of  a  little  respite  ;  a  short  time 
would  seem  more  precious  than  the  treasures  of  empires.  Nothing 
would  be  so  much  esteemed  as  a  moment  of  time,  which  is  now  by 
months  and  years  so  lavishly  misspent.  Oh!  how  deeply  would  it 
wound  your  heart  when,  looking  back  into  yourself,  you  consider 
many  faults  committed  and  not  confessed  :  many  good  works  omitted 
or  not  recovered  ;  your  service  to  God  promised  but  never  performed. 
How  intolerable  will  be  your  case!  Your  friends  are  fled,  your  serv- 
ants frightened,  your  thoughts  amazed,  your  memory  distracted,  your 
whole  mind  aghast,  and,  unable  to  perform  what  it  would,  only  your 
guilty  conscience  will  continually  upbraid  you  with  most  bitter  accusa- 
tions. What  will  be  your  thoughts  when,  stripped  of  your  mortal 
body,  and  turned  both  out  of  the  service  and  house-room  of  this 
world,  you  are  forced  to  enter  into  uncouth  and  strange  paths,  and 
with  unknown  and  ugly  company  to  be  carried  before  a  most  severe 
Judge,  carrying  in  your  own  conscience  your  judgment  written,  and  a 
perfect  register  of  all  your  misdeeds  ;  when  you  shall  see  Him  pre- 
pared to  pass  sentence  upon  you  against  whom  you  have  transgressed  ; 
He  is  to  be  the  umpire  whom  by  so  many  offences  you  have  made 
your  enemy  ;  when  not  only  the  devils  but  even  the  angels  will  plead 
against  you,  and  yourself,  in  spite  of  your  will,  be  your  own  sharpest 
impeacher  ?  What  would  you  do  in  these  dreadful  exigencies,  when 
you  saw  the  ghastly  dungeon  and  huge  gulf  of  hell  breaking  out  with 
most  fearful  flames  ;  when  you  heard  the  weeping  and  gnashing  of 
teeth,  the  rage  of  these  hellish  monsters,  the  horror  of  the  place,  the 
rigor  of  the  pain,  the  terror  of  the  company,  and  the  eternity  of  the 
punishment?  Would  you  then  think  them  wise  that  would  delay  in 
such  weighty  matters,  and  idly  play  away  a  time  allotted  to  prevent  such 
intolerable  calamities  ?  Would  you  then  account  it  secure  to  nurse  in 
your  bosom  a  brood  of  serpents,  or  suffer  your  soul  to  entertain  so 
many  accusers  ?  Would  not  you  then  think  a  whole  life  too  little  to 
do  penance  for  so  many  iniquities  ?  \Vhy,  then,  do  you  not  at  least 
devote  the  small  remnant  and  surplus  of  these  your  latter  days  in 
seeking  to  make  an  atonement  with  God,  and  in  freeing  your  conscience 


72      SOUTHWELL,  CRASH  A  IV,  AND  HABINGTON. 

from  the  corruption  that,  by  your  treason  and  fall,  has  crept  into  it ; 
whose  very  eyes  that  read  this  discourse,  and  very  understanding  that 
conceiveth  it,  shall  be  cited  as  certain  witnesses  of  what  I  describe  ? 
Your  soul  will  then  experience  the  most  terrible  fears,  if  you  do  not 
recover  yourself  into  the  fold  and  family  of  God's  Church." 

For  six  years  Southwell  labored  in  his  native  land. 
Many  Catholic  souls,  even  priests,  in  hiding,  were  strength- 
ened by  his  example  and  consoled  by  his  fervent  piety. 
His  zeal  made  many  return  to  the  Church  and  saved 
others  from  apostasy.  Protected  by  Lady  Arundel,  whose 
confessor  he  was,  he  performed  his  sacred  duties  and 
wrote  at  intervals;  but  the  crown  of  martyrdom,  like  a 
pillar  of  fire,  was  always  before  him.  It  led  to  the 
Promised  Land,  and  he  was  soon  to  gain  the  end  for  which 
he  worked.  The  manner  of  his  betrayal  and  imprison- 
ment is  related  graphically  by  Mr.  Turnbull  in  his  bio- 
graphy affixed  to  Mr.  Russell  Smith's  edition  of  the  martyr's 
poems : 

"  There  was  resident  at  Uxendon,  near  Harrow-on-the-Hill,  in 
Middlesex,  a  Catholic  family  of  the  name  of  Bellamy,  whom  South- 
well was  in  the  habit  of  visiting  and  providing  with  religious  instruc- 
tion, when  he  exchanged  his  ordinary  close  confinement  for  a  purer 
atmosphere.  One  of  the  daughters,  Ann,  had  in  her  early  youth  ex- 
hibited marks  of  the  most  vivid,  unmistakable  piety  ;  but,  having  been 
committed  to  the  Gatehouse  of  Westminster,  her  faith  gradually  de- 
parted, and  along  with  it  her  virtue.  For,  having  formed  an  intrigue 
with  the  keeper  of  the  prison,  she  subsequently  married  him,  and  by 
that  step  forfeited  all  claim  which  she  had  by  law  or  favor  upon  her 
father.  In  order,  therefore,  to  obtain  some  fortune  she  resolved  to 
take  advantage  of  the  act  of  27  Elizabeth,  which  made  the  harboring 
of  a  priest  a  treason,  with  confiscation  of  the  offender's  goods.  Ac- 
cordingly she  sent  a  messenger  to  Southwell,  urging  him  to  meet  her 
on  a  certain  day  and  hour  at  her  father's  house,  whither  he,  either  in 
ignorance  of  what  had  happened,  or  under  the  impression  that  she 


SO  U  TH  W ELL.  CRA  SHA  IV,  A  ND  HA  BING  TO.Y.      7  3 

sought  his  spiritual  assistance  through  motives  of  penitence,  went  at 
the  appointed  time.  In  the  mean  while,  having  apprised  her  husband 
of  this,  as  also  of  the  place  of  concealment  in  her  father's  house  and 
the  mode  of  access,  he  conveyed  the  information  to  Topcliff,  an  im- 
placable persecutor  and  denouncer  of  the  Catholics,  who  with  a  band 
of  his  satellites,  surrounded  the  premises,  broke  open  the  house,  ar- 
rested his  reverence,  and  carried  him  off  in  open  day,  exposed  to  the 
gaze  of  the  populace.  He  was  taken  in  the  first  instance  to  Topcliffs 
house,  where  during  a  few  weeks  he  was  put  to  the  torture  ten  times, 
with  such  dreadful  severity  that  Southwell,  complaining  of  it  to  his 
judges,  declared  in  the  name  of  God  that  death  would  have  been  more 
preferable.  » 

' '  The  manner  in  which  he  was  agonized  may  be  seen  in  Tanner's 
Societas  Jesu  Martyr.  But  all  was  to  no  purpose  ;  the  sufferer  main- 
tained an  inflexible  silence  ;  nothing  could  shake  his  constancy  ;  and 
the  tormentors  affirmed  that  he  resembled  a  post  rather  than  a  man. 
He  was  then  transferred  to  the  same  Gatehouse  which  was  kept  by 
the  husband  of  the  wretch  who  had  betrayed  him,  and,  after  being 
confined  there  for  two  months,  was  removed  to  the  Tower  and  thrown 
into  a  dungeon  so  filthy  and  noisome  that,  when  brought  forth  at  the 
end  of  a  month  to  be  examined,  his  clothes  were  covered  with  vermin. 
Whereupon  his  father  presented  a  petition  to  Elizabeth,  humbly  en- 
treating that  if  his  son  had  committed  anything  for  which  by  the  laws 
he  had  deserved  it,  he  might  suffer  death  ;  if  not,  as  he  was  a  gentle- 
man, he  hoped  her  majesty  would  be  pleased  to  order  that  he  should 
be  treated  as  such,  and  not  to  be  confined  in  that  filthy  hole.  The 
queen,  in  consequence,  ordered  that  he  should  be  better  lodged  and 
gave  his  father  permission  to  supply  him  with  clothing,  necessaries, 
and  books  ;  of  which  latter  the  only  ones  which  he  asked  for  were  the 
Bible  and  the  works  of  St.  Bernard.  During  all  his  protracted  con- 
finement, although  his  sister  Mary,  who  was  married  to  a  gentleman 
of  the  name  of  Bannister,  had  occasional  access  to  him,  he  never  dis- 
coursed of  anything  but  religion." 

He  was  kept  in  prison  for  three  years.  At  last,  upon 
his  own  petition,  he  was  brought  to  trial.  According  to 
Challoner,  Cecil's  reply  to  this  petition  was  "  that  if  he 
was  in  so  much  haste  to  be  hanged  he  should  quickly  have 
his  desire.'*  He  was  removed  from  the  Tower  to  New- 


74      SO  U  TH  WELL,  CRA  SIT  A  W,  A  ND  HA  BING  TON. 

gate,  and  on  the  2ist  of  February,  1595,  he  was  taken  to 
Westminster  and  tried.  His  conduct  before  the  court  was 
worthy  of  his  life.  He  was  serene,  manly,  and  not  pre- 
sumptuous. He  denied  that  he  was  guilty  of  treason,  but 
confessed  that  he  was  a  Catholic  priest,  and  that  his  pur- 
pose in  England  was  to  administer  the  rites  of  the  Church 
to  her  faithful  children.  He  was  condemned,  and  on  the 
morning  of  the  22d  of  February  was  executed  at  Tyburn. 
Through  the  blundering  of  the  hangman  his  agony  was 
prolonged,  and  he  "several  times  made  the  sign  of  the 
cross  while  hanging."  He  was  drawn  and  quartered;  but 
"  through  the  kindness  and  interference  of  the  bystanders 
the  martyr  was  allowed  to  die  before  the  indignities  and 
mutilations  were  allowed."  And  this  happened  in  the 
reign  of  a  woman  whom  historians  have  named  "  good," 
and  whom  Englishmen  have  been  taught  to  reverence  as 

"great!" 

* 
*  * 

William  Habington,  who  was  born  in  1605,  has  been 
strangely  neglected  by  Catholics  and  the  public  in  general. 
The  pathos  of  Southwell's  death  did  much  toward  keep- 
ing his  fame  alive;  but  it  is  difficult  to  understand  why, 
when  Crashaw  is  remembered,  Habington  is  almost  for- 
gotten. In  those  wonderful  melanges  of  literature  com- 
pounded "  for  the  use  of  schools  and  colleges  "  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  find  mention  of  him,  and  well  did  he  write  in  "  The 
Holy  Man:" 

"  Grown  older  I  admired 
Our  poets  $s  from  heaven  inspired 


SOUTHWELL,  CRA SHAW,  AND  HABINGTON.      75 

What  obelisks  decreed  I  fit 
For  Spenser's  art  and  Sydney's  wit ! 
But  waxing  sober  soon  I  found 
Fame  but  an  idle  sound." 

It  is  not  surprising  that  we,  who  have  left  the  name  of 
a  real  Catholic  poet,  George  Miles,  fade  away,  and  to 
whom  the  Catholic  Canadian,  Louis  Frechette,  is  only  an 
unknown  name,  should  not  delve  into  volumes  of  forgotten 
law  for  Habington's  poems ;  it  is  surprising  that  at  this 
time,  when  the  resurrection  of  musty  poets  has  become  a 
mania,  so  little  has  been  done  for  one  who,  if  not  born  a 
singer,  was  yet  so  near  the  divine  voice  as  to  catch  some 
exquisite  echoes.  He  was  pre-eminently  the  poet  of 
conjugal  love,  as  Southwell  was  the  poet  of  the  higher  * 
love.  His  song  is  always  of  two  pure  hearts  feeling  hope 
and  fear,  to  whom  the  fever  of  passion  is  unknown.  Hab- 
ington  came  of  a  good  Catholic  family,  which  is  a  distinc- 
tion in  a  country  where  the  good  families  had  been  so  willing 
to  barter  faith  for  fortune.  The  stanchness  of  his  blood  was 
proved  by  the  way  his  ancestors  had  kept  the  faith.  His 
uncle,  Edward  Habington,  having  been  implicated  in  Bab- 
ington's  famous  conspiracy  to  rescue  the  Queen  of  Scots, 
was  hanged,  drawn  and  quartered  at  St.  Giles  in  the  Fields. 
As  usual,  there  was  a  Protestant  minister  at  the  scaffold, 
who  urged  him  to  be  of  a  lively  faith.  He  answered  that 
he  believed  steadfastly  in  the  Catholic  faith.  The  minister 
feared  that  he  deceived  himself,  and  asked  what  he  meant. 
"  I  mean,"  he  answered,  "  that  faith  and  religion  which  is 
holden  in  almost  all  Christendom,  except  here  in  Eng- 
land." After  this,  much  to  the  disgust  of  the  reverend 


76.    SOUTH  WELL,  CRA  SHA  IV,  A  ND  HA  BING  TON. 

gentleman,  he  would  answer  no  questions,  but  prayed  to 
himself  in  Latin.  In  his  dying  speech  he  "  cast  out  threats 
and  terrors  of  the  blood  that  was  ere  long  to  be  shed  in 
England."  The  poet's  father,  Thomas  Habington,  was 
also  implicated  in  the  same  conspiracy.  He  escaped  prob- 
ably because  the  people  were  becoming  tired  of  the  shed- 
ding of  the  blood  of  some  of  the  noblest  men  in  England. 
It  was  not  hard  for  the  public  to  sympathize  with  generous 
youths  who,  as  if  to  return  to  the  days  of  chivalry,  had 
risked  their  lives  in  behalf  of  a  beautiful  and  unfortunate 
queen.  The  people  at  heart  were  not  entirely  devoted  to 
the  daughter  of  Anne  Boleyn,  and  the  wily  politicians 
around  her  throne  knew  when  it  was  prudent  to  stop  the 
shedding  of  blood.  Hence,  Thomas  Habington  escaped 
the  fate  of  his  brother.  He  went  to  prison,  however,  and 
when  he  was  released,  Mary  Stuart  had  bidden  farewell  to 
earth  and  gone,  let  us  hope,  to  find  a  happier  than  even 
"  le  plaisant  pays  de  France."  He  retired  to  his  ancestral 
manor,  Hendlip,  where  he  led  a  life  of  lettered  leisure, 
producing  several  works  of  local  topography  and  a  trans- 
lation of  the  epistle  of  Geldus  a  Britain.  He  suffered  a 
second  imprisonment  for  suspected  implication  in  the 
Gunpowder  Plot.  That  he  sheltered  the  Jesuits,  Father 
Garnet  and  Father  Oldcorne,  afterwards  most  unjustly 
hanged,  at  Hendlip,  was  the  only  evidence  against  him. 
James  I.  is  said  always  to  have  been  partial  to  the  partisans 
of  his  mother,  and  it  is  possible  that  Thomas  Habington's 
connection  with  the  Babington  plot  may  have  worked  in 
favor  of  his  release.  His  brother-in-law,  Lord  Monteagle, 


SOUTHWELL,  CRASH  A  IV,  AND  HABIXGTON,      77 

interceded  in  his  behalf,  and  after  his  escape  a  second 
time  he  betook  himself  to  the  company  of  his  children 
and  books. 

Of  his  son,  the  poet,  little  is  known,  except  his  love- 
story.  He  was  educated  at  St.  Omer  and  at  Paris.  Re- 
turning to  England  with  the  down  just  sprouting  on  his 
lip,  he  fell  in  love.  The  lady  of  his  thoughts  was  Lucy 
Herbert,  the  daughter  of  Lord  Powis.  Habington  was  a 
gentleman  of  small  estate  and  a  bearer  of  a  name  that  of 
late  had  not  been  on  the  winning  side.  Lord  Powis  felt 
that  the  niece  of  Northumberland  and  the  granddaughter 
of  an  earl  might  look  for  a  more  splendid  suitor.  But 
Lucy — the  incomparable  Castara  of  Habington's  poem — 
looked  with  favor  on  the  poet.  The  course  of  true  love 
did  not  run  smooth,  but  its  variations  were  rather  the  rip- 
ples of  an  April  shower  than  the  waves  of  an  autumn 
storm.  Following  the  fashion,  young  Habington  wooed 
his  lady-love  in  verse.  It  does  not  take  much  to  excite 
turmoil  in  a  poet's  soul,  and  Habington's  troubles  must 
have  been  mild  indeed,  since  they  did  not  excite  anything 
but  the  most  proper  and  gentlemanlike  protest: 

"  Parents'  laws  must  bear  no  weight 

When  they  happiness  prevent, 
And  our  sea  is  not  so  strait 
But  it  room  has  for  content." 

This  is  about  the  most  violent  sentiment  he  utters.  Lord 
Powis  belonged  to  the  Catholic  branch  of  the  Herberts, 
and  the  stanchness  of  the  Habington  faith  must  have  had 
some  effect  in  softening  his  opposition.  He  was  not  a 


7  8      SO  U  TH  WELL,  CRA  SIT  A  W,  A  ND  HA  BING  TON. 

very  cruel  parent,  and  the  fact  that  Habington  had  a"  small 
estate  neutralized  his  demerit,  in  a  father's  eyes,  of  oc- 
casionally dropping  into  poetry.  In  all  his  raptures  of 
Castara's  sighs,  glances,  eyebrows,  and  bosom  Habington 
never  loses  a  certain  consciousness  of  "  deportment."  He 
is  never  tired  of  protesting  that  the  bent  of  his  love  is 
honorable  and  his  purpose  marriage — an  iteration  that 
the  occasion  does  seem  to  require.  But  if  his  verse  was 
somewhat  mannered — and  even  the  spiritual  Southwell 
did  not  escape  the  conceits  of  his  time — his  sentiment  is 
always  honest,  manly,  and  pure.  His  thoughts  did  not 
wander  from  his  wife,  the  wonderful  Castara.  Next  to 
religion  she  was  the  lodestar  of  his  thoughts.  He  was 
married  at  the  age  of  twenty-eight,  and  the  years  of  his 
life  afterward  kept  the  peaceful  and  happy  promise  of  his 
wedding-day. 

His  description  of  Castara  is  the  most  exquisite  passage 
in  his  greatest  poem : 

"  Like  the  violet  which  alone 

Prospers  in  some  happy  shade, 
My  Castara  lives  unknown, 
To  no  looser  eye  betrayed. 
For  she's  to  herself  untrue 
Who  delights  i '  th'  public  view. 

"  Such  is  her  beauty,  as  no  arts 

Have  enricht  with  borrowed  grace  , 
Her  high  birth  no  pride  imparts, 
For  she  blushes  in  her  place. 
Folly  boasts  a  glorious  blood  ; 
She  is  noblest  being  good. 


SOL'TJIlf'ELL,  CRASHA  W,  AND  HABINGTON.      79 

"  Cautious,  she  knew  never  yet 

What  a  wanton  courtship  meant ; 
Nor  speaks  loud  to  boast  her  wit, 
In  her  silence  eloquent. 

Of  herself  survey  she  takes. 

But  'tween  men  no  difference  makes. 

' '  She  obeys  with  speedy  will 

Her  grave  parent's  wise  commands  ; 
And  so  innocent  that  ill 

She  nor  acts  nor  understands. 
Women's  feet  run  still  astray, 
If  once  to  ill  they  know  the  way. 

"  She  sails  by  that  rock,  the  court, 

Where  oft  honour  splits  her  mast ; 
And  retiredness  thinks  the  port 
Where  her  fame  may  anchor  cast. 
Virtue  safely  cannot  sit, 
Where  vice  is  enthron'd  for  wit. 

"  She  holds  that  day's  pleasure  best 
When  sin  waits  not  on  delight. 
Without  mask,  or  ball,  or  feast. 
Sweetly  spends  a  %vinter's  night. 

O'er  that  darkness,  whence  is  tlmut 
Prayer  and  sleep,  oft  governs  lust. 

"  She  her  throne  makes  reason  climb, 

• 

\Yhile  wild  passions  captive  lie, 
And  each,  each  article  of  time 
Her  pure  thoughts  to  heaven  fly. 

All  her  vows  religiotts  be, 

And  her  love  she  vows  to  me" 

He  was  friendly  with  all  the  great  literary  men  of  the 
time.  There  is  a  tradition  that  he  was  not  absent  from 
those  feasts  of  reason  and  flows  of  sack  in  which  Jonson, 
Massinger,  and  the  jolly  crew  of  the  famous  old  inns  in- 
dulged; with  him  all  things  were  enjoyed  in  moderation. 


8o      SO  U  TH  WELL,  CRA  SHA  W,  A  ND  HA  BING  TON. 

Tranquil,  serene,  surrounded  by  his  children  and  sup- 
ported by  a  firm  faith,  of  which  "  The  Holy  Man,"  the 
fourth  part  of  "  Castara,"  is  an  evidence,  he  ended  a  happy 
and  peaceful  life  in  1654. 

He  had  not  been  unaccustomed  to  the  pomp  of  that 
court  in  which  Charles  I.  and  Henrietta  Maria  reigned,  in 
which  Waller  sang  and  Vandyke  painted,  and  in  his  vol- 
ume of  poems  (republished  by  Arber  in  1870)  the  most 
celebrated  names  of  the  epoch  appear  in  dedications.  His 
tragi-comedy  of  "  The  Queene  of  Arragon  "  was  acted  in 
1640  at  Whitehall.  The  favor  of  the  court  did  not  disturb 
him,  nor  did  the  Civil  War  draw  him  from  his  seclusion. 
He  was  not  a  man  to  act  except  under  strong  impulse, 
and  it  is  probable  that  neither  the  Cavaliers  nor  the 
Roundheads  wholly  had  his  sympathy. 

"  Castara  "  is  divided  into  four  parts.  "  The  Mistress," 
"The  Wife,"  "The  Friend,"  and  "The  Holy  Man."  It 
speaks  well  for  the  unpoetical  constancy  of  Habington 
that  Castara  as  the  wife  is  even  more  beloved  than  Castara 
the  mistress.  The  muse  did  not  say  imperatively  to  him, 
as  she  did  to  a  later  and  very  different  bard,*  "  Poete, 
prends  ton  luth."  Indeed,  one  cannot  help  suspecting 
that  he  often  took  up  his  lute  because  he  had  nothing  else 
to  do.  From  lack  of  perception  Habington  is  often  un- 
even. That  perfect  art  that  welds  all  parts  into  simplicity 
was  unknown  to  him  as  to  most  of  the  Elizabethan  poets. 
He  startles  the  reader  with  vivid  lines  which  are  like  the 
bright  scarlet  of  the  -salt -marsh's  bushes  among  the  tawny 

*  De  Mussel,  "  Nuit  de  Mai." 


SOUTHWELL,  CRASHA  IV,  AND  HABINGTON.      81 

hues  of  autumn.  He  cares  little  for  the  technical  part  of 
his  art.  His  sonnet  to  "  Castara  in  a  Trance,"  although 
very  fine,  lacks  the  dignity  of  the  sonnets  of  Milton,  which 
he  must  have  known.  To  those  scornful  critics  who  assert 
that  the  sonnet  at  its  best  is  only  fourteen  jingling  lines, 
it  will  be  an  interesting  comparison  with  any  one  of  Dante's 
or  with  Wordsworth's  "  The  World  is  Too  Much  with  Us." 

"  Forsake  me  not  too  soon  ;  Castara,  stay, 

And  as  I  break  the  prison  of  my  clay 

I'll  fill  the  canvas  with  my  expiring  breath, 

And  sail  with  thee  o'er  the  vast  main  of  Death. 

Some  cherubim  thus,  as  we  pass,  shall  play  : 
"  Go,  happy  twins  of  love  ! '     The  courteous  sea 

Shall  smooth  her  wrinkled  brow  ;  the  winds  shall  sleep, 

Or  only  whisper  music  to  the  deep  ; 

Every  ungentle  rock  shall  melt  away, 

The  sirens  sing  to  please,  not  to  betray  ; 

The  indulgent  sky  shall  smile  ;  each  starry  choir 

Contend  which  shall  afford  the  brighter  fire  ; 

While  love,  the  pilot,  steers  his  course  so  even, 

Ne'er  to  cast  anchor  till  we  reach  to  heaven." 

This  is  a  jingling  sonnet ;  but  it  is  not  the  sonnet's 
highest  form.  These  striking  lines,  like  most  striking  lines 
in  his  poetry,  are  too  epigrammatic;  nevertheless  they  are 
beautiful.  He  addressed  roses  in  Castara's  bosom : 

"  Then  that  which  living  gave  you  room 

Your  glorious  sepulchre  shall  be  ; 
There  wants  no  marble  for  a  tomb 
Whose  breast  has  marble  been  to  me." 

In  this  stanza  there  is  much  melody  and  truth: 

"  They  hear  but  when  the  mermaid  sings, 
And  only  see  the  falling  star, 

Who  ever  dare 

Affirm  no  woman  chaste  or  fair." 
6 


82      SOU TH WELL,  CRA SHA  W,  A ND  HA BING TON. 

His  reverence  for  the  Blessed  Virgin,  and,  after  her,  for 
Castara,  made  him  believe  in  the  virtue  of  all  women. 
Sensuousness,  which  is  not  lacking  in  his  poems,  never 
degenerated  into  sensuality.  The  boldest  flight  of  his 
fancy  is  stayed  by  the  influence  of  religion  on  a  clean 
heart.  He  believed  that 

"  Virtuous  love  is  one  sweet,  endless  fire." 
To  poets  who  thought  otherwise,  he  said: 

"  You  who  are  earth  and  cannot  rise 

Above  your  sense, 

Boasting  the  envied  wealth  which  lies 
Bright  in  your  mistress'  lips  or  eyes, 

Betray  a  pitied  eloquence." 

The  exquisite  lines, 

"  When  I  survey  the  bright  celestial  sphere, 
So  rich  with  jewels  hung  that  night 
Doth  like  an  Ethiop  bride  appear," 

remind  one  of  Shakspeare's 

' '  Her  beauty  hung  upon  the  cheek  of  night, 
Like  a  rich  jewel  in  an  Ethiop's  ear." 

There  is  no  greater  similarity  between  these  passages 
than  between  Wordsworth's 

"  Violet  by  a  mossy  stone," 
and  Habington's 

' '  Like  a  violet  which  alone 
Prospers  in  some  happy  shade." 

But  why  blame  poets  for  limning  coincidences  which 
nature  makes  ?  The  poet  who  is  truest  to  nature  must 
often  seem  to  plagiarize  from  those  who  have  been  true 


SOUTHWELL,  CRASH  A  W,  AND  HABINGTON.      83 

before  him.  Habington's  worst  faults  are  those  of  taste. 
They  go  no  deeper.  "  Castara,"  as  a  whole,  is  a  noble 
poem  that  deserves  to  live.  Probably  in  no  other  poet's 
works — if  we  except  Tennyson — has  a  higher,  yet  not 
superhuman,  idea  of  womanhood  been  given.  The  most 
exceptional  and  beautiful  characteristic  of  the  three  truly 
Catholics  poets — Southwell,  Habington,  and  Crashaw — 
is  their  spotless  purity  of  word  and  thought.  Faith  and 
purity  go  hand-in-hand.  If  "  Castara "  were  studied  in 
this  age  it  might  almost  make  chastity  fashionable  among 
men.  This  virtue  of  Sir  Galahad  was  not  common  in 
Habington's  time,  and  it  has  always  required  much  courage 
in  a  man  of  the  world  to  proclaim  that  he  possesses  a 
quality  which  is  generally  regarded  as  the  crowning  attri- 
bute of  womanhood.  To  this  poet,  who  dared  to  dedicate, 
in  a  licentious  age,  his  work  to  the  woman  who  was  to 
him  as  the  Church  of  Christ,  we  owe  honor;  it  was  his 
Catholic  faith  and  practice  that  made  him  so  noble  among 
the  men  of  his  time.  Habington  ought  to  be  studied  by 
all  young  Catholics.  Americans  have  inherited  his  poems 
along  with  that  language  which  was  forced  on  the  ances- 
tors of  some  of  us,  but  which  is  none  the  less  our  own. 
His  faults  of  technique,  so  glaringly  apparent  in  this  day 
of  almost  perfect  technique  in  poetry,  offer  lessons  in 
themselves.  No  man  can  read  "  Castara  "  without  feeling 
better  and  purer,  and  of  how  many  poets  can  this  be  said  ? 
Since  Pope  taught  the  critics  to  place  execution  above 
conception,  Habington  has  found  no  place.  It  remains  for 
the  rising  generation  of  young  Catholics  who  read  and 


84      SOUTHWELL,  CRASH  A  W,  AND  HABINGTON. 

think  to  give  him  a  niche  that  will  not  be  unworthy  of  the 

poet  of  that  chaste  love  which  was  born  of  Christianity. 

* 
*  * 

If  Richard  Crashaw,  a  poet  who,  by  reason  of  his  entire 
devotion  to  his  faith  and  his  absolute  purity,  belongs  to 
this  group,  had  written  nothing  except  the  finale  of  "  The 
Flaming  Heart,"  he  would  deserve  more  fame  than  at 
present  distinguishes  his  name.  "The  Flaming  Heart," 
marred  as  it  is  by  those  exasperating  conceits  which  Cra- 
shaw never  seemed  tired  of  indulging  in,  is  full  of  the 
intense  fervor  which  the  subject — "the  picture  of  the 
seraphical  St.  Teresa,  as  she  is  usually  expressed  with 
seraphim  beside  her  " — would  naturally  suggest  to  a  religi- 
ous and  poetic  mind.  After  what  Mr.  Simcox  very  justly 
calls  "  an  atrocious  and  prolonged  conceit,"  *  this  poem 
beautifully  closes: 

' '  O  thou  undaunted  daughter  of  desires  ! 
By  all  thy  dower  of  lights  and  fires  : 
By  all  the  eagle  in  thee,  all  the  dove  ; 
By  all  thy  lives  and  deaths  of  love  ; 
By  thy  large  draughts  of  intellectual  day, 
And  by  thy  thirsts  of  love  more  large  than  they  ; 
By  all  thy  brim-fill'd  bowls  of  fierce  desire, 
By  thy  last  morning's  draught  of  liquid  fire, 
By  the  full  kingdom  of  that  final  kiss 
That  seized  thy  parting  soul  and  sealed  thee  His  ; 
By  all  the  heav'n  thou  hast  in  him, 
(Fair  sister  of  the  seraphim  !) 
By  all  of  him  we  have  in  thee, 
Leave  nothing  of  myself  in  me. 
Let  me  so  read  thy  life  that  I 
Unto  all  life  of  mine  may  die." 

*  The  English  Poets. 


SOUTHWELL,  CRASHA  W,  AND  HABINGTON.       85 

The  mystical  fire  which  lights  this  poem  is  a  character- 
istic of  all  Crashaw's  religious  verses.  "  Intellectual  day  " 
is  a  favorite  expression  of  his ;  "  the  brim-fill'd  bowls  of 
fierce  desire  "  is  one  of  those  lowering  conceits  that  occur 
so  jarringly  in  Habington's  poetry,  and  that  are  intolerably 
frequent  in  Crashaw.  Born  about  1615,  he  began  to  write 
at  a  time  when  a  poem  lacking  in  quaint  conceits  was 
scarcely  a  poem,  and  his  verse,  delicate,  tender,  original, 
and  singularly  fluent  in  diction,  lost  much  strength  from 
this  circumstance  and  from  his  habit  of  diluting  a  thought 
or  a  line  until  all  its  force  was  lost.  No  poet  since  his 
time  has  been  given  so  greatly  to  dilution  and  repetition, 
except  Swinburne.  In  the  famous  "  Wishes,"  written  to 
a  mythical  mistress, 

"  Whoe'er  she  be, 

That  not  impossible  she 
That  shall  command  my  heart  and  me," 

he  plays  with  one  idea,  fantastically  twisting  it  and  repeat- 
ing it  until  the  reader  grows  weary. 

In  1646,  four  years  before  his  death,  Richard  Crashaw 
published  "  Steps  to  the  Temple."  Reading  it,  one  may 
well  exclaim,  with  Cowley: 

"Poet  and  saint,  to  thee  alone  are  given 
The  two  most  sacred  names  in  earth  and  heaven  !  " 

It  glows  with  an  impetuous  devotion  which  is  like  the 
rush  of  a  fiery  chariot.  It  carries  the  soul  upward,  al- 
though an  occasional  earthly  conceit  clogs  its  ascending 
rush.  And  yet  it  is  evident  that  the  devotion  of  the  poet 


86       SO  U  TH  WELL,  CRA  SHA  IV,  A  ND  HA  BING  TON. 

was  so  genuine  that  he  did  not  think  of  his  mode  of  ex- 
pression. He  tore  out  the  words  that  came  nearest  to  him, 
in  order  to  build  a  visible  thought.  Pope  did  not  hesitate 
to  borrow  the  finest  passages  in  "  Eloisa  and  Abelard  " 
from  Crashaw,  and  there  are  many  lines  in  Crashaw's 
poems  which  unite  the  perfect  finish  of  Pope  to  a  spon- 
taneity and  poetic  warmth  which  the  "  great  classic  "  never 
attained. 

Crashaw  was  born  in  an  "intellectual  day"  tempered 
by  a  dim  religious  light.  His  father,  like  Habington's, 
was  an  author,  a  preacher  in  the  Temple  Church,  London, 
near  which  the  poet  was  born.  He  took  his  degree  at 
Cambridge.  He  entered  the  Anglican  Church  as  a  min- 
ister. But  his  views  were  not  orthodox ;  he  was  expelled 
from  his  living,  and  soon  after  he  became  a  Catholic. 
From  his  poems  it  is  plain  that  Crashaw  was  always  a 
Catholic  at  heart.  He  entered  the  Church  as  one  who, 
having  lived  in  a  half-forgotten  place  in  dreams,  enters 
it  without  surprise.  Crashaw  went  to  court,  but  gained 
no  preferment.  The  "  not  impossible  she  "  whose  courtly 
opposites  suggested  the  portrait  never  "materialized" 
herself.  He  became  a  priest,  and  died  in  1650,  canon  of 
Loretto — an  office  which  he  obtained,  it  is  said,  through 
the  influence  of  the  exiled  Queen  Henrietta  Maria. 
Crashaw's  poems  are  better  known  than  Habington's, 
though,  with  the  exception  of  "  Wishes,"  which,  like  Her- 
rick's  "To  Daffodils,"  is  quoted  in  almost  every  reader, 
and  the  lovely  poem  beginning, 


SOUTHWELL,  CRASIIAW,  AND  HABINGTON.       87 

"  Lo!  here  a  little  volume  but  large  book 
(Fear  it  not,  sweet, 
It  is  no  hypocrite), 
Much  larger  in  itself  than  in  its  look," 

they  are  read  only  in  odd  lines  or  striking  couplets.  Cra- 
shaw  had  the  softened  fire  of  Southwell  with  the  placid 
sweetness  of  Habington.  He  possessed  a  wider  range 
than  either  of  them ;  the  fact  that  he  was  at  his  best  in 
paraphrases  shows  that  he  did  not  own  the  force  and 
power  which  Habington  had  in  less  degree  than  Southwell, 
or  that  his  fluency  of  diction  and  copiousness  of  imagery 
easily  led  him  to  ornament  the  work  of  others  rather  than 
to  carve  out  his  own.  As  he  stands,  any  country — even 
that  which  boasts  of  a  Shakspeare — may  be  proud  to  claim 
him.  For  the  fame  of  our  three  Catholic  poets  it  is  un- 
fortunate that  they  wrote  in  the  great  shade  of  Shakspeare ; 
but  in  the  presence  of  great  intellectual  giants  they  are 
by  no  means  dwarfs.  Flawless  as  men,  unique  and  genu- 
ine as  poets,  they  cannot  die  as  long  as  the  world  honors 
goodness  and  that  divine  spark  which  men  call  poetry. 
They  were  Catholic ;  true  alike  to  their  faith  and  their  in- 
spiration ;  faithful,  and,  being  faithful,  pure  as  poets  or 
men  are  seldom  pure. 


LECTURE  V- 

AN    INTRODUCTION   TO   THE   STUDY   OF 
TENNYSON. 

I  AM  about  to  speak  of  the  greatest  artist  in  words  who 
has  ever  worked  in  the  plastic  English  language — an  artist 
who,  having  the  divine  gift  of  uttering  poetry  both  in 
essentials  and  attributes,  yet,  with  constant  and  noble 
dissatisfaction,  refines  these  attributes  to  their  highest 
point.  I  mean  Lord  Tennyson,  a  great  English  poet,  but 
not  the  greatest  of  English  poets. 

His  influence  on  the  life  and  literature  of  our  time 
has  been  immense.  He  at  once  expressed  and  reflected 
the  spirit  of  our  time,  although  of  late  there  has  been  a 
perceptible  move  against  his  teachings  or  rather  his  ideals. 
A  literary  generation  that  pretends  to  like  brutal  realism 
cannot  logically  be  expected  to  admire  the  purity  and 
delicacy  of  a  poet  who  never  fails  to  throw  all  the  light  of 
a  glorious  art  around  truth,  purity,  and  duty. 

King  Arthur  is  too  ideal,  too  pure,  for  tastes  formed  by 
Swinburne  and  Rossetti,  and  the  readers  of  novels  which 
depend  for  their  success  on  constant  sensation  find  Tenny- 
son's exquisite  pictures  of  inanimate  objects  without  in- 
terest. And  yet  if  Tennyson  succeeded  Wordsworth, 


INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON.      89 

Tennyson  also  succeeded  Byron.  While  Wordsworth  was 
serene,  a  painter  of  nature,  Byron  was  the  opposite  of 
him.  He  was  fiery,  volcanic,  furious,  lurid,  great  in  , 
genius,  but,  it  must  be  said,  impure.  But  he  was  popu- 
lar, while  Wordsworth,  whom  the  world  is  now  only  be- 
ginning to  acknowledge,  was  neglected ;  so  that,  strange 
as  it  may  seem  at  first,  Tennyson's  immediate  predecessor 
was  Lord  Byron.  Byron's  popularity  was  great  while  he 
lived ;  young  men  quoted  him,  wore  open  and  turn-down 
collars,  assumed  a  corsair-like  look  and  an  appearance  of 
wickedness  which  were  supposed  to  be  Byronic.  This 
generation  passed  away,  or  rather  grew  older,  and  the 
younger  people  became  Tennysonian.  They  were  senti- 
mental and  a  little  maudlin ;  but  they  did  not  affect  By- 
ronic desperation  or  mysterious  wickedness.  The  hero 
of  "  Locksley  Hall," — I  mean  the  first  part  of  it,  for  I 
think  the  second  part  printed  about  ten  years  ago  is  de- 
cidedly the  better, — is  a  poor  kind  of  a  stick.  And  the 
hero  of  "  Maud  "  is  of  a  similar  type. 

In  "  Locksley  Hall  "  the  hero  sighs  and  moans,  and  calls 
Heaven's  vengeance  down  on  his  ancestral  roof  because 
a  young  girl  has  refused  to  marry  him, — because  his  cousin 
Amy  marries  another  man,  he  goes  into  a  paroxysm  of 
poetry  and  denunciation  and  prophecy.  But  as  Shak- 
speare  says, — "  Many  men  have  died,  but  not  for  love." 
And  the  hero  of  "  Locksley  Hall "  lives  to  write  in  a  calmer 
style  a  good  many  years  later.  "  Maud,"  another  famous 
poem,  like  "  Locksley  Hall,"  showed  something  of  the  in- 
fluence of  Bryon.  It  is  a  love  story,  too,  broken,  inco- 


90      INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON. 

herent,  but  very  poetical,  with  lines,  here  and  there,  that 
seem  to  flash  into  the  mind ;  for  instance : 

"  A  million  emeralds  break  from  the  ruby-budded  lime 
In  the  little  grove  where  I  sit, — ah,  wherefore  cannot  I  be 
Like  things  of  the  season  gay,  like  the  bountiful  season  bland, 
When  the  far-off  sail  is  blown  by  the  breeze  of  a  softer  clime, 
Half  lost  in  the  liquid  azure  bloom  of  a  crescent  of  sea, 
The  silent,  sapphire-spangled  marriage-ring  of  the  land." 

After  "  Locksley  Hall "  and  "  Maud,"  the  influence  of 
Byron  on  Tennyson  seems  to  grow  less. 

In  studying  the  poetry  of  poets,  it  is  a  wise  thing  to 
study  the  influence  of  poets  upon  it.  The  young  Tenny- 
son's favorite  poet  was  Thomson. — he  of  the  serene  and 
gentle  "Seasons."  Alfred  Tennyson  was  born  at  Som- 
ersby  in  Lincolnshire,  England,  on  August  6th,  1809.  He 
began  to  write  stories  when  he  was  very  young.  He  wrote 
chapters  of  unending  novels  which  he  put,  day  after  day, 
under  the  potato  bowl  on  the  table.  Miss  Thackeray  says 
that  one  of  these,  which  lasted  for  months,  was  called 
"The  Old  Horse."  She  gives  this  account  of  his  first 
poem: 

"Alfred's  first  verses,  so  I  have  heard  him  say,  were 
written  upon  a  slate  which  his  brother  Charles  put  into  his 
hand  one  Sunday  at  Louth,  when  all  the  elders  of  the  party 
were  going  into  church,  and  the  child  was  left  alone. 
Charles  gave  him  a  subject — the  flowers  in  the  garden — 
and  when  he  came  back  from  church  little  Alfred  brought 
the  slate  to  his  brother,  all  covered  with  written  lines  of 
blank  verse.  They  were  made  on  the  models  of  Thom- 
son's '  Seasons,'  the  only  poetry  he  had  ever  read.  One 


INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON.      91 

can  picture  it  all  to  one's  self,  the  flowers  in  the  garden,  the 
verses,  the  little  poet  with  waiting  eyes,  and  the  young 
brother  scanning  the  lines.  '  Yes,  you  can  write,'  said 
Charles,  and  he  gave  Alfred  back  the  slate/1 

There  is  another  story  that  his  grandfather  asked  him 
to  write  an  elegy  on  his  grandmother.  When  it  was  writ- 
ten, the  old  gentleman  gave  the  boy  ten  shillings,  saying: 
"  There,  that  is  the  first  you  have  ever  earned  by  your 
poetry,  and,  take  my  word  for  it,  it  will  be  your  last." 

This  Charles,  who  admitted  that  Alfred  could  write, 
became  a  very  sweet  poet  himself  as  years  went  on.  The 
poet  of  Alfred's  first  love  was  the  calm  and  pleasant 
Thomson.  Later,  as  he  grew  toward  manhood,  he  read 
Byron,  then  the  fashion.  He  scribbled  in  the  Byronic 
strain.  How  strong  a  hold  Byron's  fiery  verse  had  taken 
on  the  boy's  mind  is  shown  by  his  own  confession.  When 
Alfred  was  about  fifteen,  the  news  came  that  Byron  was 
dead.  "  I  thought  the  whole  world  was  at  an  end,"  he 
said.  "  I  thought  everything  was  over  and  finished  for 
every  one — that  nothing  else  mattered.  I  remember  I 
walked  out  alone,  and  carved  '  Byron  is  dead '  into  the 
sandstone."  Although  "  Locksley  Hall "  and  "  Maud" 
show  Byronic  reflections,  yet  they  were  not  the  earliest 
published  of  Tennyson's  poems. 

His  life  was  placid,  serene,  pleasant.  At  home  in  one 
of  the  sweetest  spots  of  England,  at  college  he  lived  among 
congenial  friends,  and  his  after-life  was  and  is  the  ideal 
life  of  a  poet.  The  premature  death  of  his  friend,  Arthur 
Hallam — to  which  we  owe  the  magnificent  poem,  "In 


92      INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON. 

Memoriam  " — was  perhaps  the  saddest  event  that  came  to 
him.  Longfellow,  his  great  contemporary,  was  also  happy. 
And  just  before  the  tragic  death  of  his  wife — she  was 
burned  to  death — a  friend  passing  his  cottage  said :  "  I  fear 
change  for  Longfellow,  for  any  change  must  be  for  the 
worse." 

And  this  is  the  drop  of  bitterness  that  must  tinge  all  our 
happiness  in  this  world — the  thought  that  most  changes 
must  be  for  the  worse.  But  changes  that  have  come  to 
Tennyson  have  brought  him  more  praise,  more  honor, 
until  of  late  people  have  begun  to  say  that  the  laureate 
could  only  mar  the  monument  he  has  made  for  himself 
by  trying  to  add  too  many  ornaments  to  it. 

In  his  first  volume,  published  fifty-nine  years  ago,  he 
showed  to  the  world  a  series  of  delicately-tinted  portraits 
of  ladies.  "Claribel,"  "Lilian,"  "Isabel,"  "Mariana," 
"  Madeline,"  "Adeline," — his  gorgeous  set  of  pictures  in 
arabesque,  "  Recollections  of  the  Arabian  Nights,"  "Love 
and  Death,"  "  The  Dying  Swan." 

The  appearance  of  this  volume  was  not  hailed  as  a 
revelation  by  the  reading  public.  And  indeed  there  was 
little  in  it  to  indicate  the  poet  of  "  The  Idyls  of  the  King," 
of  "  The  Princess  "  and  of  "  In  Memoriam,"  except  a  fine- 
ness of  art  which  no  English  poet  has  yet  surpassed  or 
even  equalled.  If  "Airy,  fairy  Lilian  "  is  like  a  cherry- 
stone minutely  carved,  yet  Tennyson  was  the  first  poet  to 
show  how  delicately  such  work  could  be  done.  If  "  Mar- 
iana in  the  Moated  Grange  "  is  only  an  exercise  in  jewelled 
notes,  what  bard  ever  drew  such  exquisitely  modulated 


INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON.      93 

tones  from  his  lyre  before  ?  If  it  is  "  a  little  picture 
painted  well,"  where  was  the  poet  since  Shakspeare  who 
could  have  painted  the  picture  so  well  ?  "  The  Owl," 
though  many  laughed  at  it,  had  something  of  the  quality 
of  Shakspeare's  snatches  of  song. 

There  was  not  a  trace  of  Byron  in  this  utterance.  The 
poet  who  had  won  the  prize  offered  by  Cambridge  for 
English  poetry,  in  1829,  and  who  somewhat  earlier  had 
seemed  in  despair  over  the  death  of  Byron,  did  not  utter 
fierce  heroics.  He  painted  pictures  with  a  feeling  for  art 
that  was  new  in  literature.  How  this  wonderful  technical 
nicety  struck  the  sensitive  young  readers  of  the  time,  Ed- 
mund Clarence  Stedman  tells  us  in  "  The  Victorian  Poets :" 

"It  is  difficult  now  to  realize  how  chaotic  was  the  notion  of  art 
among  English  verse-makers  at  the  beginning  of  Tennyson's  career. 
Not  even  the  example  of  Keats  had  taught  the  needful  lesson,  and  I 
look  on  his  successor's  early  efforts  as  of  no  small  importance.  These 
were  dreamy  experiments  in  metre  and  word-painting,  and  spontane- 
ous after  their  kind.  Readers  sought  not  to  analyze  their  meaning 
and  grace.  The  significance  of  art  has  since  become  so  well  under- 
stood, and  such  results  have  been  attained,  that  'Claribel,'  '  Lilian,' 
'  The  Merman,'  '  The  Dying  Swan'  seem  slight  enough  to  us  now  ; 
and  even  then  the  affectation  pervading  them,  which  was  merely  the 
error  of  a  poetic  soul  groping  for  its  true  form  of  expression,  repelled 
men  of  severe  and  established  tastes  ;  but  to  the  neophyte  they  had 
the  charm  of  sighing  winds  and  bubbling  waters,  a  wonder  of  luxury 
and  weirdness,  inexpressible,  not  to  be  effaced." 

It  was  evident  that  Tennyson  regarded  poetry  as  an  art. 
It  was  evident  that  this  art  was  one  that  needed  constant 
and  persistent  cultivation.  It  was  evident  that,  deprived 
as  he  was  cf  the  material  color  of  the  painter,  he  was  de- 
termined to  make  words  flash,  jewel-like,  to  make  them 


94      INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON. 

burn  in  crimson,  or  to  convey  with  all  the  vividness  of  a 
Murillo,  tints — not  only  the  color,  but  the  tints — of  the 
sky,  the  earth,  even  of  the  atmosphere  itself. 

Let  us  take  "  Mariana."  Look  at  the  picture.  The 
subject  is  that  of  a  woman  waiting  in  a  country  house 
surrounded  by  a  moat.  It  is  a  simple  subject,  not  a  com- 
plex or  many-sided  one.  See  how  Tennyson  gets  as  near 
color  as  words  can.  We  may  be  sure  that  he  cast  and 
recast  that  poem  many  times  before  he  printed  it. 

"  With  blackest  moss  the  flower  plots 

Were  thickly  crusted,  one  and  all ; 
The  rusted  nails  fell  from  the  knots 
That  held  the  peach  to  the  garden  wall. 

The  broken  sheds  looked  sad  and  strange, 
Unlifted  was  the  clinking  latch  ; 
Weeded  and  worn  the  ancient  thatch 
Upon  the  lonely  moated  grange." 

"  All  day  within  the  dreamy  house, 

The  doors  upon  their  hinges  creak'd  ; 
The  blue  ily  sung  in  the  pane  ;  the  mouse 

Behind  the  mouldering  wainscot  shriek'd, 
Or  from  the  crevice  peered  about." 

Millet,  in  "The  Angelus,"  depicted  sound  by  the  magic 
of  his  brush  which  had  the  potent  spell  of  color.  Similarly, 
Tennyson,  in  "  Mariana,"  over-leaped  the  limitations  of 
his  art,  and  painted  in  words  both  color  and  sound  and 
something  more  subtle  than  either. 

Notice,  too,  how  careful  is  his  choice  of  epithets  in  this 
early  book.  He  asks: 

"  Wherefore  those  faint  smiles  of  thine, 
Spiritual  Adeline  ?  " 


INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON.      95 

You  will  never  find  a  fault  of  taste  in  Tennyson ;  and 
if  you  should  find  a  trochee  where  you  expected  an  iam- 
bus, be  sure  it  is  there  because  the  musician  willed  a  re- 
freshing or  effective  discord.  At  the  age  of  twenty-two, 
he  published  the  volume  containing  "  The  Lady  of  Shal- 
ott,"  "Oenone,"  "Lady  Clara  Vere  de  Vere,"  "The 
May  Queen,"  "  The  Miller's  Daughter,"  "  The  Palace  of 
Art,"  "  Of  Old  Sat  Freedom  on  the  Heights,"  and  half 
a  dozen  others  equally  famous,  equally  exquisite,  and  all 
showing  an  advance  in  power  over  his  first  volume  and 
also  a  decrease  in  affectation.  "The  Lady  of  Shalott  " 
is  an  allegory — for  Tennyson,  like  all  English  poets  from 
Chaucer  to  himself,  is  fond  of  allegories.  In  "  The  Lady 
of  Shalott "  we  have  the  first  hint  of  the  poem  we  now 
know  as  "  Elaine." 

The  Lady  of  Shalott  is  poetry,  one  of  the  helps  to  the 
intellectual  progress  of  man.  But,  to  remain  strong  and 
spiritual,  poetry  must  be  pure.  It  must  not  become 
worldly  or  earthy.  It  must  weave  its  web  high  above  the 
sordid  aims  of  sin.  And  so  the  Lady  of  Shalott  worked. 

"  There  she  weaves  by  night  and  day, 
A  magic  web  with  colors  gay, 
She  has  heard  a  whisper  say, 
A  curse  is  on  her  if  she  stay 
To  look  down  to  Camelot, 

She  knows  not  what  the  curse  may  be 
And  so  she  weaveth  steadily, 
And  little  other  care  hath  she, 
The  Lady  of  Shalott." 

But,  after  a  time,  this  wonderful  lady  who  weaves  into 
her  web  for  the  solace  and  delight  of  man  all  the  sights 


96      INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON. 

that  pass  her  as  shadows  is  tempted  to  go  down  from  her 
spiritual  height.  She  yields  to  the  temptation  and  dies. 
In  this  allegory,  we  find  the  germ  of  Elaine,  "  the  lily  maid 
of  Astolat." 

Henri  Taine,  the  clever  French  critic  of  English  litera- 
ture, who  fails  in  his  appreciation  of  Tennyson,  as  his 
compatriot,  Voltaire,  failed  to  rise  to  the  heights  of  Shak- 
speare,  tells  us  that,  dissatisfied  with  the  critics  after  the 
appearance  of  his  second  volume,  Tennyson  printed  noth- 
ing for  ten  years.  In  1842,  his  third  volume  appeared. 
It  was  called  "  English  Idyls  and  Other  Poems."  This 
was  the  glorious  fruition  of  a  spring-time  which  had  caught 
and  garnered  all  the  fresh  beauty  of  the  opening  year. 
The  April  and  May  of  the  poet's  first  poems  had  ripened 
into  June,  and  the  June,  azure-skied,  rich,  blooming,  gave 
promise  of  even  greater  loveliness. 

In  "  The  Lady  of  Shalott,*'  we  found  the  hint  of  Elaine. 
In  this  new  volume,  we  find  studies  for  the  great  symphony 
to  come — that  English  epic  which  is  the  poet's  master- 
piece. In  this  volume  is  that  Homeric  fragment — the 
Morte  d  Arthur — which  is  one  of  the  finest  passages  ever 
written  in  any  language.  Dante  never  wrote  anything 
more  sustained  in  strength,  more  heroic  in  style,  more 
reticent  in  expression  and  deeper  in  feeling  than 

"  So  all  day  long  the  noise  of  battle  rolled." 

But,  to  be  logical,  I  must  not  consider  the  Morte 
d  Arthur  here.  In  its  place  in  this  third  volume,  it  is  really 
out  of  place.  It  belongs  at  the  end  of  the  complete  Idyls, 


INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TEXXYSOX.      97 

all  of  which  we  have  now.  But  in  1842,  the  world  had 
only  hints  of  them ;  in  the  third  volume  the  most  portent- 
ous hint  was  the  Morte  d  Arthur.  There  were  others. 
— "  St.  Agnes,"  "  Sir  Galahad,"  "  Sir  Launcelot  and  Guine- 
vere." 

Looking  through  this  third  volume,  you  will  find  all  the 
characteristics  of  the  poet.  Not  only  in  the  use  of  words 
carried  to  the  highest  point,  the  development  of  a  fashion 
of  blank  verse  which  is  as  much  Tennysonian  as  Spenser's 
verse  is  Spenserian,  a  love  for  classic  forms  and  allusions ; 
but  in  a  great  love  for  English  landscapes,  English  country 
life,  English  modes  of  speeches,  and  English  institutions. 
Above  all,  whether  the  poet  tells  us  a  Saxon  legend  like 
that  of  "Godiva;"  a  rustic  idyl  like  "The  Gardener's 
Daughter;  "  a  modern  story  like  "  Dora,"  or  a  Middle-age 
legend  like  "  The  Beggar  Maid,"  there  permeates  all  his 
verse  reverence  for  womanhood  and  purity  and  nobility 
of  principle  which  is  characteristic  of  all  his  work  and  all 
his  moods.  This  is  one  reason  why  all  women  love  Ten- 
nyson's poetry;  for  women  are  quicker  than  men  to  ap- 
preciate the  pure  and  the  true  in  literature.  It  is  to 
Tennyson  more  than  to  any  other  man  that  we  owe  the 
elevation  and  purity  of  most  of  the  public  utterances  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  He,  more  than  any  other  living 
writer,  has  both  influenced  and  been  influenced  by  his  time. 
He  is  intensely  modern.  He  is  of  the  Victorian  age  as 
Shakspeare  was  of  the  Elizabethan  age.  In  truth,  as  Ben 
Jonson  and  Shakspeare  were  representative  of  the  spirit 
of  their  time,  so  Tennyson  is  the  exponent  of  ours.  When 


98      INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON. 

he  is  highest,  he  is  a  leader ;  when  lowest,  a  follower.  He 
is  reverential  to  Christianity ;  in  the  case  of  his  most  im- 
portant work,  "  The  Idyls  of  the  King,"  he  is  almost 
Catholic  in  his  spirit,  because  he  has  borrowed  his  legends 
from  Catholic  sources;  but  still  "all  his  mind  is  clouded 
with  a  doubt." 

Tennyson's  doubt  is  evident  even  in  that  solemn  and 
tender  dirge,  "  In  Memoriam,"  which  formed  his  fifth 
volume,  published  a  year  after  "The  Princess,"  in  1850. 
The  Greek  poet,  Moschus,  wrote  an  elegy  on  his  friend, 
Bion,  and  the  refrain  of  this  elegy,  "  Begin,  Sicilian  Muses, 
begin  the  lament"  is  famous.  Tennyson,  this  modern 
poet,  possessed  of  the  Greek  passion  for  symmetry  and 
influenced  as  much  by  Theocritus,  Mochus,  and  Bion  as 
by  the  spirit  of  his  own  time,  has  made  an  elegy  on  his 
friend  as  solemn,  as  stately,  as  perfect  in  its  form  as  that 
of  Moschus;  but  not  so  spontaneous  and  tender.  There 
is  more  pathos  in  King  David's  few  words  over  the  body 
of  Absalom  than  in  all  the  noble  falls  and  swells  of  "  In 
Memoriam."  I  doubt  whether  any  heart  in  affliction  has 
received  genuine  consolation  from  this  decorous  and 
superbly  measured  flow  of  grief.  It  is  not  a  poem  of 
Faith,  nor  is  it  a  poem  of  doubt ;  but  Faith  and  doubt 
tread  upon  each  other's  footsteps.  Instead  of  the  divine 
certitude  of  Dante,  we  have  a  doubting  half  belief.  Ten- 
nyson loves  the  village  church,  the  holly-wreathed  bap- 
tismal font,  the  peaceful  vicarage  garden,  the  comfortable 
vicar,  because  they  represent  serenity  and  order.  He  de- 
tests revolution.  If  he  lived  before  the  coming  of  Christ, 


INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON.      99 

in  the  vales  of  Sicily,  he  would  probably  have  hated  to  see 
the  rural  spots  of  the  pagans  disturbed  by  the  disciples  of 
a  less  picturesque  and  natural  religion.  His  belief  is 
summed  up  in  these  words : 

"  Behold  we  know  not  anything" ;  ' 

I  can  but  trust  that  good  shall  fall. 
At  last, — far  off,— at  last,  to  all, 
And  every  winter  change  to  spring. 

"'  So  runs  my  dream  ;  but  what  am  I  ? 
An  infant  crying  in  the  night : 
An  infant  crying  for  the  light, 
And  with  no 'language  but  a  cry.' 

He  believes  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and  yet, — to 
use  again  the  words  he  puts  into  the  mouth  of  his  own 
King  Arthur, — "  all  his  mind  is  clouded  with  a  doubt." 
He  says: 

"  My  own  dim  life  should  teach  me  this, 
That  life  should  live  for  evermore 
Else  earth  is  darkness  at  the  core, 
And  dust  and  ashes  all  that  is 

"  This  round  of  green,  this  orb  of  flame, 
Fantastic  beauty,  such  as  lurks 
In  some  wild  poet,  when  he  works 
Without  a  conscience  or  an  aim. 

"  What  then  were  God  to  such  as  I  ? 

'Twere  hardly  worth  my  while  to  choose 
Of  things,  all  mortal,  or  to  use 
A  little  patience  ere  I  die  ; 

"  'Twere  best  at  once  to  sink  to  peace, 

Like  birds  the  charming  serpent  draws, 
To  drop  head  foremost  in  the  jaws 
Of  vacant  darkness  and  to  cease." 

But  he  is  possessed  by  the  restlessness  of  our  time. 


100    INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON. 

He  does  not  proclaim  aloud  that  Christ  lives ;  he  looks  on 
the  faith  of  his  sister  with  reverence,  but  he  does  not  par- 
ticipate in  it;  his  highest  hope  is  that  a  new  time  will 
bring  the  faith  that  comes  of  self-control  and  that  the 
"  Christ  that  is  to  be  "  will  come  with  the  new  year.  To 
be  frank,  the  Christianity  of  Tennyson  seems  to  be  little 
more  tangible  than  the  religion  of  George  Eliot.  He 
seems  to  hold  that  Christianity  is  good  so  far  because  no 
philosopher  can  offer  the  world  anything  better.  Between 
the  burning  faith  of  Dante  and  the  languid,  half-sympa- 
thetic toleration  of  Tennyson,  the  gulf  is  as  great  as  be- 
tween the  fervor  of  St.  John  the  Evangelist  and  the  mild 
beliefs  of  the  modern  broad-church  Anglican  divine.  So 
much  for  the  most  noble  elegy  of  our  century,  which 
needs  only  a  touch  of  the  faith  and  fire  of  Dante,  to  make 
it  the  grandest  elegy  of  all  time.  Arthur  Hallam,  the 
subject  of  the  "  In  Memoriam,"  had  been  Tennyson's 
dearest  friend ;  he  was  engaged  to  marry  the  poet's  sister. 
"  He  was,"  Tennyson  himself  said,  in  later  years,  "  as  per- 
fect as  mortal  man  could  be."  "  In  Memoriam  "  was  a 
sincere  tribute  of  love  and  genius  to  goodness  and  talent. 
Regret  as  we  may  the  absence  of  that  Christian  certitude 
which  can  alone  point  upward  unerringly  from  the  mists 
of  doubt,  yet  we  must  rejoice  that  the  nineteenth  century 
brought  forth  from  the  chaos  of  Byronic  utterances  and  the 
pretty  rhetorical  paper-flower  gardens  of  Rogers  and 
Campbell  a  poem  so  pure  in  spirit  and  so  pure  in  form. 

Before  considering  "  The  Idyls  of  the  King,"  that  grand 
and  exquisite  epic,  which  combines  the  ideal  of  Christian 


INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON.    IOI 

chivalry  with  the  perfection  of  modern  expression,  I  must 
call  your  attention  to  Tennyson's  lyrics,  especially  to  the 
little  songs  scattered  through  "  The  Princess."  There  is 
one  lyric  not  in  "  The  Princess  "  which  must  live  forever. 
And  when  you  ask  why  ?  I  can  only  say  because  it  is 
poetry.  No  man  has  ever  yet  exactly  denned  what  poetry 
is.  But  if  any  man  should  ask  me  for  illustrations  of  the 
most  evanescent  quality  in  poetry, — that  quality  which  is 
utterly  incapable  of  being  defined,  I  should  point  to  the 
"  Break,  Break,  Break,"  of  Tennyson  and  Longfellow's 
"  Rainy  Day."  Tennyson's  expression  of  the  inexpres- 
sible,—-Tennyson's  crystallization  of  a  mood  is  perfect, — 

'  Break,  break,  break, 
On  thy  cold,  gray  stones,  O  Sea, 

And  I  would  that  my  tongue  could  utter 
The  thoughts  that  arise  in  me. 

"  O,  well  for  the  fisherman's  boy, 

That  he  shouts  with  his  sister  at  play, 
O,  well  for  the  sailor  lad, 

That  he  sings  in  his  boat  on  the  bay  ! 

"  And  the  stately  ships  go  on 

To  their  haven  under  the  hill  ; 
But  O,  for  the  touch  of  a  vanished  hand, 
And  the  sound  of  a  voice  that  is  still  ! 

"Break,  break,  break, 
At  the  foot  of  thy  crags,  O  Sea, 

But  the  tender  grace  of  a  day  that  is  dead 
Will  never  come  back  to  me." 

I  must  apologize  for  using  the  word  "  exquisite "  so 
often.  It  is  the  only  word  by  which  we  can  express  the 
art  of  these  lovely — unsurpassingly  lovely — little  songs. 


102    INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON. 

We  owe  "  The  Idyls  of  the  King  "  to  the  fact  that  Alfred 
Tennyson  read  and  pondered  over  Sir  Thomas  Malory's 
old  black-letter  legends  of  King  Arthur's  Round  Table. 
Here  he  found  the  story  of  his  epic  ready  made.  In  the 
form  he  adopted,  we  find  the  influence  of  Theocritus,  who 
seems,  of  all  poets  who  wrote  in  Greek,  to  have  most  in- 
fluenced him.  The  title  of  his  epic  poem  Tennyson  took 
from  Theocritus.  The  Idyls  of  Theocritus  are  short  pas- 
toral poems,  full  of  sweetness,  tenderness  and  love  of  rural 
life.  In  these  qualities,  Theocritus  and  Tennyson  are 
much  in  sympathy.  Theocritus  was  born  about  two  hun- 
dred and  eighty-four  years  before  the  birth  of  Our  Lord. 
His  songs  are  of  Sicilian  woods  and  nightingales,  of  the 
musical  contests  of  shepherds.  In  Tennyson's  "  Oenone," 
we  find  many  traces  of  Theocritus,  even  paraphrases  on 
him.  "  Godiva  "  is  formed  on  an  idyl  of  Theocritus,  and 
his  famous  lullaby  is  suggested  by  Theocritus'  song  of 
Alcmena  over  the  infant  Hercules. 

Carlyle  did  not  approve  of  Tennyson's  reflections  of  the 
Greek.  And  he  expressed  it  in  his  pleasant  way.  "  See 
him  on  a  dust-hill  surrounded  by  innumerable  dead  dogs." 

The  term  "  Idyl,"  though  applicable  enough  to  the  light 
and  pastoral  poems  of  Theocritus,  was  hardly  so  appro- 
priate to  the  various  parts  of  the  Arthurian  epic.  But 
Tennyson  has  made  the  title  his  own ;  we  love  "  The  Idyls 
of  the  King  "  by  the  name  he  has  re-created  for  them. 

The  "  Idyls "  are  not  complete.  Though  scattered 
through  several  volumes  now,  they  will  doubtless  soon  be 
given  to  us  by  the  Laureate  in  logical  sequence.  They 


INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON.    103 

follow  each  other  in  this  order:  "  The  Coming  of  Arthur," 
"Gareth  and  Lynette,"  "Enid,"  "  Balin  and  Balan," 
"Vivien,"  "Elaine,"  "The  Holy  Grail,"  "  Pelleas  and 
Ettarre,"  "  The  Last  Tournament,"  "  Guinevere,"  and 
"  The  Passing  of  Arthur." 

The  "  Idyls  of  the  King ''  is  an  allegory,  as  well  as  an 
epic.  It  carries  a  great  moral  lesson.  It  is  an  epic  of  a 
failure, — a  failure  which  falls  on  King  Arthur  and  his 
knights  because  of  the  sin  that  crept  among  them,  like  a 
serpent,  and  left  its  trail  over  all.  Arthur,  the  ideal  king, 
the  chivalrous  servant  of  Christ,  seems  to  represent  the 
spiritual  life.  His  Queen  Guinevere  is  "  sense  at  war  with 
soul."  She  loves  the  things  of  earth  better  than  those  of 
heaven.  And  from  her  betrayal  of  the  King, — her  fall, 
like  that  of  "  The  Lady  of  Shalott," — her  sinful  love  for 
Sir  Launcelot,  who  represents  the  pride  of  the  flesh, — flow 
all  the  many  evils  that  fall  on  the  court  of  King  Arthur. 

It  is  true  that  the  allegorical  meaning  in  some  of  the 
Idyls  is  dimmer- than  in  others.  Sometimes  it  seems  to 
disappear  altogether.  I  recommend  to  your  attention  a 
very  ingenious  interpretation  made  by  Mr.  Conde  Fallen, 
of  St.  Louis,  you  will  find  in  a  recent  volume  of  The 
Catholic  World.  I  can  hardly  see  my  way  clear  to  adopt- 
ing the  interpretation  of  Mr.  Fallen,  which  attracted  the 
favorable  attention  of  Lord  Tennyson ;  but  to  which  the 
Laureate  did  not  commit  himself. 

It  is  not  fair  to  see  in  a  poet's  work  more  than  he  sees 
himself,  and  therefore  I  shall  speak  only  of  those  allegor- 
ical meanings  that  are  self-evident.  It  seems  to  me  that 


104   INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON. 

the  allegorical  character  of  the  Idyls  was  something  of  an 
afterthought  with  Tennyson. 

"  The  Coming  of  Arthur  "  is  the  first  Idyl.  King  Arthur 
seems  to  typify  the  soul.  There  is  a  dispute  about  Arthur. 
The  King  Leodogran  will  not  give  Arthur,  the  knight 
who  has  saved  him,  his  daughter  Guinevere,  until  he  is 
satisfied  about  Arthur's  birth.  Some  say  he  came  from 
heaven,  others  that  he  was  even  as  the  earth.  So  men 
have  disputed  over  the  origin  of  the  soul.  There  is  no 
soul,  some  say, — no  spiritual  life.  But  Queen  Bellicent 
cries  out,  describing  the  scene  of  Arthur's  coronation, — 

"  But  when  he  spake  and  cheer'd  his  Table  Round 
With  large,  divine,  and  comfortable  words 
Beyond  my  tongue  to  tell  thee — I  beheld 
From  eye  to  eye  thro'  all  their  Order  flash 
A  momentary  likeness  of  the  King  ; 
And  ere  it  left  their  faces,  thro'  the  cross 
And  those  around  it  and  the  Crucified, 

' '  Down  from  the  casement  over  Arthur  smote 
Flame-color,  vert  and  azure,  in  three  rays. 
One  falling  upon  each  of  three  fair  queens, 
Who  stood  in  silence  near  his  throne,  the  friends 
Of  Arthur,  gazing  on  him,  tall,  with  bright 
Sweet  faces,  who  will  help  him  at  his  need." 

The  Lady  of  the  Lake  is  there  too,  "clothed  in  white 
samite,  mystic,  wonderful" — "a  mist  of  incense  curled 
about  her." 

The  three  Queens  are  Faith,  Hope,  and  Charity,  on 
whom  the  colors  symbolical  of  them, — flame-color,  blue, 
and  green, — fall  from  the  crucifix  in  the  stained  glass  of 
the  casement, — the  crucifix  being  the  source  of  all  grace. 


INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON.    105 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Arthur  represents  the  spiritual 
soldier  sent  by  Our  Lord  to  conquer  the  unbelievers 
and  make  clean  the  land.  The  Lady  of  the  Lake, — the 
Church, — gives  him  the  sword  Excalibur,  which  comes 
from  the  serene  depth  of  an  untroubled  lake. 

Merlin,  the  sage  and  magician,  is  human  reason  without 
grace,  strong,  quick  to  see,  failing  of  being  omnipotent  be- 
cause it  lacks  Faith.  In  a  later  Idyl,  "  Vivien  "  we  see  the 
grave  sage  who  relies  on  the  proud  power  of  his  intellect 
ruined  by  his  weakness  when  approached  by  the  tempta- 
tions of  sensuousness.  The  lesson  of  "  Vivien  "  is  that 
reason  and  the  highest  culture,  of  themselves,  are  not 
proof  against  corruption. 

When  the  question  is  put  to  Merlin  whether  King  Arthur 
was  sent  from  heaven  or  not,  he  answers,  as  human  culture 
too  often  does  as  to  the  origin  of  the  soul,  by  a  riddle. 
He  says: 

"  Rain,  rain,  and  sun  !  a  rainbow  in  the  sky ! 
A  young  man  will  be  wiser  by  and  by. 
An  old  man's  wit  may  wander  ere  he  die. 

"  Rain,  rain,  and  sun!  a  rainbow  on  the  lea ! 
And  truth  is  this  to  me  and  that  to  thee ; 
And  truth,  or  clothed,  or  naked,  let  it  be. 

"  Rain,  sun,  and  rain  !  And  the  free  blossom  blows  ! 
Sun,  rain,  and  sun,  and  where  is  he  who  knows  ! 
From  the  great  deep  to  the  great  deep  he  goes  !  " 

This  is  the  answer  of  modern  skepticism  to  the  ques- 
tions of  the  soul.  "  Rain,  sun,  and  rain!  "  he  says.  They 
exist  because  we  see  them.  But,  after  all,  it  makes  no 
difference  whether  you  beh'eve  ths,t  there  is  beauty  jn 


lo6    INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON. 

Heaven  or  no  Heaven  at  all, — only  the  earth.  Truth  is 
only  a  mirage, — a  delusion  of  the  senses  and  the  elements, 
— whether  it  seems  of  earthly  or  of  heavenly  origin.  A 
young  man  will  find  this  out,  by  and  by,  though  the  old 
man's  wits  may  wander  and  he  may  take  visions  for  reali- 
ties. 

"  From  the  great  deep  to  the  great  deep  he  goes." 

This  is  Herbert  Spencer's  answer  to  "The  Unknow- 
able." And  Pilate's  doubt,  "What  is  truth?"  finds  its 
echo  in  Merlin's  cynical  phrase, 

"  And  truth  is  this  to  me  and  that  to  thee." 
The  first  Idyl  has  this  line : 

"  The  first  night,  the  night  of  the  new  year, 
Was  Arthur  born." 

Let  us  observe,  too,  that  King  Arthur  and  Guinevere 
were  married  in  May;  for,  through  all  the  Idyls,  the  unity 
of  time  is  carefully  observed.  The  time  in  "Gareth  and 
Lynette,"  the  second  Idyl,  is  the  late  spring  or  early  sum- 
mer. 

"  For  it  was  past  the  time  of  Easter  Day." 

And  Lynette  says: 

"Good   Lord,   how  sweetly  smells  the  honeysuckle  in  the   hushed 
night." 

"Gareth  and  Lynette"  is  full  of  symbolism.  Again, 
the  Church  appears  more  strongly  symbolized.  Gareth 
represents  the  strength  of  manhood,  the  Lady  Lyonors, 
the  spirit,  and  Lynette,  imagination.  I  would  advise  you 
to  analyze  this  poem  more  closely. 


INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON.    107 

Next  comes  "  Enid  " — most  lovely  study  of  wifely  gra- 
ciousness  and  patience.  Guinevere's  sin  has  begun  to 
work  horrible  evil  unconscious  to  herself.  It  plants  sus- 
picion in  Geraint's  mind  and  causes  Enid  to  suffer  intol- 
erably. The  time  is  still  in  the  summer. 

I  have  alluded  to  the  lesson  of  "  Vivien."  "  Balin  and 
Balan  "  precedes  it  with  the  same  lesson.  We  shall  pass 
"  Vivien," — the  time  is  still  summer,  and  a  summer  thun- 
der storm  breaks  as  Reason  (Merlin)  falls  a  prey  to  the 
seduction  of  Sensuality  (Vivien). 

"  Elaine  "  follows.  It  is  now  midsummer.  Guinevere  and 
Launcelot  begin  to  suffer  for  having  betrayed  the  blameless 
King.  Elaine,  is  "  the  lily  maid  of  Astolat."  Elaine  has 
the  charm  of  a  wood-fawn, — the  purity  of  dew  on  a  lily. 
But  she,  too,  must  die,  because  of  the  sin  of  Guinevere 
and  Launcelot,  and  because  of  her  own  wilfulness  in  loving 
Launcelot  in  spite  of  all.  Is  there  anywhere  in  poetry  a 
more  pathetic,  more  beautiful  picture  than  that  of  the 
"dead  steered  by  the  dumb"  floating  past  the  Castle  of 
Camelot  when  the  Queen  had  learned  that  the  fairest  and 
richest  jewels  are  worse  than  dust  when  bought  by  sin. 
And  Elaine — 

'•In  her  right  hand  the  lily,  in  her  left 
The  letter — all  her  bright  hair  streaming  down, 
And  all  the  coverlid  was  cloth  of  gold 
Down  to  her  waist,  and  she  herself  in  white, 
All  but  her  face,  and  that  clear-featured  face 
Was  lovely,  for  she  did  not  seem  as  dead, 
But  fast  asleep,  and  lay  as  though  she  smiled." 

"  The  Holy  Grail,"  which,  allegorically  and  practically, 


lo8   INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON. 

has  puzzled  most  commentators,  can  have  only  its  full 
signification  to  Catholics.  It  is  doubtful  whether  Ten- 
nyson, taking  the  legend  from  the  old  romancers,  has  put 
any  meaning  into  it  other  than  he  found  in  it.  The  time 
of  "The  Holy  Grail "  is  still  summer.  In  "Pelleas  and 
Ettarre,"  we  see  again  the  growing  evil  worked  by  sin  in 
King  Arthur's  plans  for  making  the  kingdom  of  Christ  on 
earth.  Sin  grows  and  Faith  fails;  the  strong  become 
weak.  Sir  Galahad's  strength  is  as  the  strength  of  ten  be- 
cause his  heart  is  pure.  The  late  summer  is  indicated 
by  the  "  silent,  seeded  meadow  grass."  In  the  next  Idyl, 
"  The  Last  Tournament,"  when  ruin  begins  to  fall,  the 
gloom  of  autumn  lowers,  we  read  of  the  "  faded  fields  " 
and  "  yellowing  woods."  In  "  Guinevere,"  when  the  doom 
of  sin  falls  on  all  the  court,  it  is  dreary  winter. 

"  The  white  mist,  like  a  face  cloth  to  the  face, 
Clung  to  the  dead  earth,  and  the  land  was  still." 

In  the  last  of  the  Idyls, — in  "  The  Passing  of  Arthur," 
we  are  in  December. — at  its  close, — 

"  And  the  new  sun  rose,  bringing  the  new  year." 

The  splendid  and  blameless  King  lies  by  "  the  winter 
sea,"  defeated,  helpless, — his  Queen  gone,  his  knights 
routed,  his  hopes  fallen.  Only  Sir  Bedivere,  who  seems 
to  represent  neither  high  Faith  nor  materialism,  but  some- 
thing between  the  two, — is  with  him.  At  last,  Sir  Bedi- 
vere  obeys  and  casts  away  the  mystic  blade,  Excalibur. 
King  Arthur,  close  by  the  "  broken  chancel  with  the  broken 
cross,"  speaks  the  most  solemn,  most  marvellous  speech 


INTRODUCTION  TO  STUDY  OF  TENNYSON.    109 

in  this  greatest  of  the  Idyls, — in  which  Tennyson  the  ex- 
quisite becomes  for  once  Tennyson  the  sublime, — 

"  And  slowly  answered  Arthur  from  the  barge  ; 
'  The  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new. 
And  God  fulfils  Himself  in  many  ways 
Lest  one  good  custom  should  corrupt  the  world. 
Comfort  thyself  :  what  comfort  is  in  me  ? 
.1  have  lived  my  life,  and  that  which  I  have  done 
May  He  within  Himself  make  pure  !  but  thou, 
If  thou  shouldst  never  see  my  face  again, 
Pray  for  my  soul.     More  things  are  wrought  by  prayer 
Than  this  world  dreams  of.     Wherefore  let  thy  voice 
Rise  like  a  fountain  for  me  night  and  day. 
For  what  are  men  better  than  sheep  or  goats 
That  nourish  a  blind  life  within  the  brain, 
If  knowing  God,  they  lift  not  hands  of  prayer 
Both  for  themselves  and  those  that  call  them  friend  ? 
For  so  the  whole,  round  earth  is  every  way 
Bound  by  gold  chains  about  the  feet  of  God. 
But  now  farewell.' " 

The  three  Queens,  clothed  in  black,  gold-crowned,  sail 
away  with  the  blameless  King  in  the  barge,  "  dark  as  a 
funeral  scarf," — and  he  is  seen  no  more 


LECTURE  VI. 

TWO  DRAMAS  BY  TENNYSON  AND  AUBREY 
DE  VERE. 

I  AM  very  anxious  to  introduce  to  you  a  poet  of  whom 
I  spoke  in  the  lecture  on  Chaucer, — a  poet  who  in  many 
respects  may  be  said  to  have  inherited  the  mantle  of 
Wordsworth.  He  was  the  intimate  friend  of  that  great 
poet;  he  is  the  friend  of  Tennyson  and  Browning;  his 
name  is  a  rallying  word  for  all  who  believe  that  art  may 
be  Christian  and  poetic  at  the  same  time.  Besides,  he  is 
acknowledged  by  the  most  careful  and  best  equipped 
critics  to  be,  in  certain  departments  of  poetry,  unequalled- 
If  he  were  not  so  Christian,  I  should,  nevertheless,  pro- 
claim him  as  a  poet  who  deserves  to  rank  beside  Tenny- 
son. But  as  he  is,  above  all,  Christian,  I  am  very  happy 
in  pointing  out  to  you,  among  a  race  of  literary  neo-pagans, 
the  one  poet  who  is  great  as  a  poet,  true  as  a  man,  mag- 
nificent in  his  adherence  to  Divine  Truth,  I  mean  Aubrey 
de  Vere. 

His  father,  Sir  Aubrey  de  Vere,  was  also  a  poet, — of 
more  warmth  than  the  son,  but  of  less  elevation.  In  the 
sonnet — one  of  the  most  perfect  forms  of  poetry  of  which 
our  language  admits — Aubrey  de  Vere  works  with  love 
and  success.  He  has  written  several  that  are  almost  flaw- 


TENNYSON  AND  AUBREY  DE    VERE.          lit 

less,  but  he  scarcely  deserves  the  praises  he  has  received 
for  his  sonnets.  As  Mrs.  Meynell,  a  competent  and  sym- 
pathetic critic,  says  in  a  recent  notice  of  him :  "  He 
frequently  passes  over  the  pauses  which  mark  the  relation 
of  the  parts ;  and  his  sonnets  seem  to  have  less  vigor  and 
movement  than  his  unfettered  lyrics.  Nevertheless,  many 
of  them  have  a  beauty  and  loftiness  of  thought  which 
make  them  memorable  poems,  whatever  they  may  be  as 
sonnets." 

But  of  the  lyrical  greatness  of  the  "  Search  for  Pros- 
erpine," the  "  Ode  to  the  Daffodil,"  and  "  The  Infant 
Bridal,"  there  can  be  no  question.  Sir  Henry  Taylor,  the 
author  of  the  famous  tragedy,  "  Philip  Van  Artevelde," 
wrote : 

"  No  lesser  light 


Than  was  lit  in  Sydney's  spirit  clear, 
Or  given  to  saintly  Herbert's  to  diffuse, 
Now  lives  in  thine,  De  Vere. " 

Even  Swinburne,  a  poet  so  unlike  him  as  to  seem  almost 
antagonistic,  praises  him. 

The  otner  day  I  said  to  you  that  you  might  be  surprised 
to  hear  me  mention  the  names  of  Aubrey  de  Vere  and 
Tennyson  in  the  same  breath :  to-day  I  shall  give  you  my 
reasons.  It  would  be  absurd  to  say  that  De  Vere  is  so 
exquisite  a  poet  as  Tennyson.  But  De  Vere  is  a  grander 
poet.  De  Vere  is  too  cold,  too  classical  to  sing  a  song 
like  the  perfect  bits  of  music  in  the  "  Princess."  De  Vere 
has  written  too  much ;  we  do  not  care  to  possess  all  his 
poems;  whereas  we  need  all  of  Tennyson's,  except  the 


112          TENNYSON  AND  AUBREY  DE    VERE. 

dramas.  If  De  Vere  had  Tennyson's  lightness  and  grace, 
his  subtle  excellence  of  diction;  if  Tennyson  had  the  re- 
ligious spirit  of  De  Vere  and  his  elevation  of  thought,  the 
nineteenth  century  would  need  no  other  poet  to  make  it 
complete. 

My  lecture  to-day  will  help  to  prove  that  the  best  poetry 
in  the  English  language  owes  its  inspiration  to  the  Catholic 
Church — which  is  Christianity  in  its  highest  form.  I  shall 
speak  of  the  qualities  of  Tennyson  and  Aubrey  de  Vere 
in  that  great  department  of  high  poetry  in  which  Shak- 
speare  made  his  fame. 

In  picturesqueness  and  "  tender  grace  of  a  day  tnat  is 
dead,"  the  "  Becket "  of  the  laureate  is  vastly  superior  to 
the  one  which,  after  "Alexander  the  Great,"  has  made 
Aubrey  de  Vere's  name  glorious  in  the  literary  annals  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  But  a  great  tragedy  on  a  subject 
which  is  what  the  Germans  call  "  epoch-making  "  demand 
higher  qualities  than  picturesqueness  and  that  nameless 
grace  and  delicacy  so  essentially  Tennysonian.  It  needs 
even  higher  qualities  than  the  contrast  of  marked  char- 
acters, pointed  epigrams,  or  the  fine  play  of  poetic  fancy. 
Lord  Tennyson's  "Becket"  has  all  the  lower  qualities, 
Aubrey  de  Vere's  "St.  Thomas  of  Canterbury"  all  the 
higher.  An  oak  is  not  more  of  an  oak  because  the  sward 
around  is  starred  by  violets  and  all  the  blooms  of  spring ; 
and  Aubrey  de  Vere's  "  St.  Thomas "  would  not  be  a 
greater  tragedy  if  it  had  the  exquisite  touches  which  the 
most  delicate  master  of  poetic  technique  the  world  has 
ever  seen  gives  to  his. 


TENNYSOX  AND  AUBREY  DE    VERE.          113 

Tennyson's  tragedy  is  meant  to  be  an  acting  play,  and 
it  barely  fails  of  being  one ;  De  Vere's  is,  frankly,  a  drama 
for  the  closet.  Perhaps  the  lack  of  nobleness  in  Tenny- 
son's is  due  to  the  necessity  he  felt  of  making  it  fit  the  arbi- 
trary refinements  of  the  stage.  The  episode  of  Fair  Rosa- 
mond, which  is  an  offence  against  historical  truth,  good 
art,  and  taste,  would  probably  never  have  been  introduced 
had  the  laureate  not  been  required  to  give  a  leading 
dramatic  lady  something  to  do.  Still,  writers  impregnated 
with  the  traditions  of  the  Reformation  are  always  crying: 
"  CJierchez  la  femme"  If  a  man  is  holy  and  there  is  no 
disputing  the  fact,  they  construct  a  romance  with  a  woman 
in  it  to  account  for  his  renunciations,  and  vice  versa.  Ten 
to  one,  if  Tennyson  is  ever  seized  with  the  idea  of  putting 
the  Blessed  Thomas  More  into  a  tragedy,  he  will  show  to 
us  the  great  chancellor  dying,  not  as  a  martyr  to  religion, 
but  as  a  martyr  to  human  love.  He  has  ruined  a  magni- 
ficent persona  by  making  him,  on  the  eve  of  his  sublime 
death  for  the  Church  and  freedom,  drivel  of  what  he  might 
have  gained  had  he  married.  In  the  monastery  at  Canter- 
bury, just  before  the  bell  rings  that  calls  him  to  his  doom, 
he  sighs  lackadaisically: 

"  There  was  a  little  fair-haired  Norman  maid 
Lived  in  my  mother's  house  :  if  Rosamond  is 
The  world's  rose,  as  her  name  imports  her — she 
Was  the  world's  lily. 

JOHN  OF  SALISBURY  : 
"  Ay,  and  what  of  her  ? 

BECKET : 

' '  She  died  of  leprosy. 
8 


114  rXWrSO.V  A\'D   AUBREY  DE    VERE. 

JOHN  OF  SALISBURY  : 

"  I  know  not  why 
You  call  these  old  things  back,  my  lord. 

BECKKT : 

"  The  drowning  man,  they  say,  remembers  all 
The  chances  of  his  life,  just  ere  he  dies." 

Possibly  this  discord  may  not  strike  the  audience  which, 
in  "  Queen  Mary,"  "  Harold,"  and  "  Becket,"  Tennyson 
addresses  himself  to.  But  to  a  Catholic  it  is  fatal  to 
whatever  harmony  he  might  have  found  in  the  tragedy. 
Surely  the  poet  who  gave  us  a  type  of  purity  in  Sir  Gala- 
had, and  of  chaste  elevation  in  King  Arthur,  might  have 
better  understood  the  character  of  the  martyred  successor 
of  St.  Anselm.  It  is  impossible  to  approach  the  climax, 
or  rather  anti-climax,  of  Tennyson's  play  without  impa- 
tience and  irritation.  If 

"  To  be  wroth  with  one  we  love 
Doth  work  like  madness  in  the  brain," 

the  discovery  that  a  true  poet  has  misunderstood  a  grand 
character  and  frittered  away  a  sublime  opportunity  is 
an  incentive,  too,  to  a  helpless  and  hopeless  sort  of 
anger. 

In  Aubrey  de  Vere's  "  St.  Thomas "  there  is  no  anti- 
climax, no  disappointment.  We  miss  sometimes  the  flowers 
that  might  grow  around  the  foot  of  the  oak,  but  the  oak 
towers  majestic.  "  St.  Thomas  "  possesses  what  many  of 
us  thought  lacking  in  the  less  ambitious  poems  of  an  author 
who  has  given  out  much  light  without  heat — sustained  in- 
tensity of  passion.  Added  to  this,  Aubrey  de  Vere 


TENNYSON  AND  AUBREY  DE    VEKE.          115 

thoroughly  understands  the  historical  meaning  of  St. 
Thomas'  time  and  the  relations  of  the  great  chancellor  and 
primate  to  that  time.  Of  these  the  laureate  seems  to  be 
in  the  densest  ignorance.  If  in  "  Queen  Mary  "  he  drew 
his  facts  from  Froude,  and  in  "  Harold "  from  Bulwer- 
Lytton,  he  appears  in  "  Becket  "  to  have  depended  on  his 
own  inner  consciousness  for  his  "  history."  He  has,  in  the 
most  important  particulars,  ignored  the  authentic  chronicles 
of  his  time. 

It  was,  indeed,  an  "epoch-making"  time,  and  one 
worthy  of  a  grand  commemoration  in  an  immortal  poem. 
England  owes  her  liberty  to  the  Church ;  and,  more  than 
all.  to  St.  Anselm  and  St.  Thomas,  because  they  first  with- 
stood the  advancing  waves  of  royal  despotism.  And  the 
freedom  of  the  Church  was  the  freedom  of  the  people. 
St.  Anselm  put  into  the  "  Mariale  "  the  echoes  of  the  wails 
of  the  Saxon  people,  beaten  down  by  Norman  conquerors 
who  would  have  been  utter  brutes — for  the  Berserker  spirit 
was  strong  in  them — were  it  not  for  the  influence  of  the 
Church.  The  Saxons  saw  their  priests  made  powerless, 
their  Church  enslaved,  and  themselves  in  hopeless  serfdom 
• — more  crushing  even  than  the  slavery  which  Ireland  en- 
dured from  the  same  hands — when  suddenly  that  Church 
which  knows  no  nationality,  which  fuses  all  nations  into 
one,  asserted  her  might  in  the  persons  of  two  primates ; 
one  of  the  conquering  race,  the  other  of  the  foreigner's 
court.  The  position  of  St.  Thomas  k  Becket  has  been 
misinterpreted  so  utterly  that  he  is  often  set  down  as  an 
ambitious  revolutionist  who  tried,  in  the  interests  of  ecclesi- 


Il6          TENNYSON  AND  AUBREY  DE    VERE. 

astical  tyranny,  to  dominate  both  king  and  people.  In 
truth,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  struggled  for  old 
English  laws  against  new  ones  devised  by  the  Normans  to 
rivet  more  closely  the  fetters  of  serfdom  on  the  Saxon 
people. 

It  has  been  made  a  reproach  against  St.  Thomas  that 
he  resisted  the  "Royal  Customs,"  that  he  figured  as  a 
haughty  prince  of  the  Church  scorning  the  pretensions  of 
the  Plantagenet,  and  that  he  died  a  martyr  to  his  obsti- 
nate desire  to  crush  even  royal  freedom,  that  he  and  his 
monks  might  triumph.  This  view  is  founded  on  a  mis- 
conception of  the  nature  of  the  Royal  Customs.  They 
were  not  old  Customs,  but  innovations  invented  by  the 
conquerors  for  their  autocratic  purposes.  Aubrey  de  Vere 
puts  into  Becket's  mouth  this  description  of  these  famous 
Customs.  The  Earl  of  Cornwall  says : 

"  You  serve  the  king 
Who  stirred  these  wars  ?  who  spurned  the  Royal  Customs  ? 

BECKET  : 

' '  The  Customs — ay,  the  Customs  ?     We  have  reached 
At  last — 'twas  time — the  inmost  of  this  plot, 
Till  now  so  deftly  veiled  and  ambushed.     '  Customs  ! ' 

0  specious  word,  how  plausibly  abused  ! 
In  Catholic  ears  that  word  is  venerable  ; 
To  Catholic  souls  custom  is  law  itself, 

Law  that  its  own  foot  hears  not,  dumbly  treading 
A  holy  path  smoothed  by  traditions  old. 

1  war  not,  sirs,  on  way  traditionary  ; 

The  Church  of  Christ  herself  is  a  tradition  ; 
Ay,  'tis  God's  tradition,  not  of  men  ! 
Sir,  these  your  Customs  are  God's  laws  reversed, 
Traditions  making  void  the  Word  of  God, 


TENNYSON  AND  AUBREY  DE    VERE.         117 

Old  innovations  from  the  first  withstood, 

The  rights  of  holy  Church,  the  poor  man's  portion, 

Sold,  and  for  naught,  to  aliens.     Customs!     Customs! 

Custom  was  that  which  to  the  lord  of  the  soil 

Yielded  the  virgin  one  day  wedded!     Customs! 

A  century  they  have  lived  ;  but  he  ne'er  lived, 

The  man  that  knew  their  number  or  their  scope, 

Where  found,  by  whom  begotten,  or  how  named  : 

Like  malefactors  long  they  hid  in  holes; 

They  walked  in  mystery  like  the  noontide  pest ; 

In  the  air  they  danced  ;  they  hung  on  breath  of  princes, 

Largest  when  princes'  lives  were  most  unclean, 

And  visible  most  when  rankest  was  the  mist. 

Sirs,  I  defy  your  Customs  :  they  are  naught : 

I  turn  from  them  to  our  old  English  laws, 

The  Confessor's  and  those  who  went  before  him, 

The  charters  old,  and  sacred  oaths  of  kings  : 

I  clasp  the  tables  twain  of  Sinai : 

On  them  I  lay  my  palms,  my  heart,  my  forehead, 

And  on  the  altars  dyed  by  martyrs'  blood, 

Making  to  God  appeal." 

These  were  the  Customs  that  St.  Thomas  resisted  to  the 
death.  In  this  speech,  so  full  of  dignity  and  fire,  Aubrey 
de  Vere  has  distorted  no  facts  for  the  sake  of  effect.  In- 
deed, throughout  the  whole  of  his  work  he  departs  in 
nothing,  except  in  the  episode  of  Idonea  de  Lisle,  the 
ward  of  Becket's  sister,  from  the  chronicled  truth.  Idonea, 
a  rich  heiress,  pursued  by  the  ruffianly  knight  De  Broc, 
who  "roamed  a-preying  on  the  race  of  men,"  took  refuge 
with  Becket's  sister  and  was  protected  by  the  power  of  the 
primate.  De  Broc  gained  the  king's  ear,  and,  "  on  some 
pretence  of  law,"  drove  Idonea  from  the  house  of  Becket's 
sister.  De  Broc  and  his  friends  sued  for  her  as  a  royal 
ward: 


Il8          TEXXYSON  AND  AUBREY  DE    J'ERE. 

"  Judgment  against  her  went.     The  day  Lad  come, 
And  round  the  minster  knights  and  nobles  watched  : 
The  chimes  rang  out  at  noon  :  then  from  the  gate 
Becket  walked  forth,  the  maiden  by  his  side  : 
Ay,  but  her  garb  conventual  showed  the  nun  ! 
They  frowned,  but  dared  no  more." 

The  feminine  interest,  to  give  which  to  his  tragedy  Ten- 
nyson invented  a  new  version  of  the  legend  of  Fair  Rosa- 
mond, is  supplied  by  Aubrey  de  Vere  in  this  very  fitting  epi- 
sode of  Idonea.  It  is  artistic  and  congruous.  Idonea  is 
exiled  from  England  when  the  king's  wrath  bursts  on  all  the 
relatives,  friends,  and  dependents  of  A  Becket;  she  finds 
refuge  with  the  Empress  Matilda,  mother  of  the  king. 
Then  occurs  a  scene  between  the  empress  and  the  novice 
which  for  spiritual  as  well  as  intellectual  elevation  has 
seldom  been  equalled. 

One  would  think  that  it  would  have  been  easy  to  give 
the  necessary  feminine  element  to  "  Becket "  by  the  use 
of  an  underplot ;  but  Tennyson  has  preferred  to  bring  the 
king's  mistress,  a  "  light  o'  love,"  Fair  Rosamond,  into  in- 
timate association  with  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
whose  chastity,  even  before  he  took  orders,  amid  all  the 
temptations  of  a  court  presided  over  by  a  loose-minded 
Provencal  queen,  was  proverbial.  Fair  Rosamond  is  re- 
habilitated for  the  purpose  of  the  laureate.  She  is  made 
to  be,  in  her  own  eyes,  the  lawful  wife  of  King  Henry,  and 
the  chancellor — not  yet  made  primate — promises  the  king 
to  protect  her  against  the  vengeance  of  Queen  Eleanor. 
Becket,  having  become  primate  and  gained  the  hatred  of 
the  king,  does  so;  and,  in  a  dagger-scene  quite  worthy  of 


TENNYSON  AND  AUBREY  DE    rERE.          119 

a  sensational  play,  saves  her  from  Eleanor's  fury.  After 
that  he  induces  her  to  leave  her  son  and  begin  a  novitiate 
in  Godstow  convent,  from  which  she  emerges,  with  the 
countenance  of  the  abbess,  disguised  as  a  monk.  She  is 
thus  present  at  the  murder  of  the  archbishop,  and  her 
presence  excites  that  tender  retrospection  so  in  keeping 
with  theatrical  traditions,  but  so  shockingly  contrary  to 
the  martyr's  character  and  the  truth  of  history.  It  is  here 
that  Becket  says,  according  to  Tennyson : 

"  Dan   John,  how  much  we  lose,  we  celibates, 
Lacking  the  love  of  woman  and  of  child  !  " 

John  of  Salisbury  seeks  to  give  the  archbishop  consola- 
tion for  his  supposed  loss,  in  a  most  ungallant  and  pessi- 
mistic tone  smacking  somewhat  of  "  sour  grapes :  " 

"  More  gain  than  loss  ;  for  of  your  wives  you  shall 
Find  one  a  slut,  whose  fairest  linen  seems 
Foul  as  her  dust-cloth,  if  she  used  it ;  one 
So  charged  with  tongue,  that  every  thread  of  thought 
Is  broken  ere  it  joins — a  shrew  to  boot, 
Whose  evil  song  far  on  into  the  night 
Thrills  to  the  topmost  tile — no  hope  but  death  ; 
One  slow,  fat,  white,  a  burthen  of  the  hearth  ; 
And  one  that,  being  thwarted,  ever  swoons 
And  weeps  herself  into  the  place  of  power." 

This  is  hardly  the  way  in  which  a  sturdy  and  ascetic 
priest  and  counsellor  would  talk  to  an  archbishop  who, 
almost  at  the  moment  of  martyrdom,  would  begin  to  look 
back  at  "  lost  chances  "  of  love  and  matrimony.  These 
touches  of  false  sentiment  show  how  impossible  it  is  for 
Tennyson  to  comprehend  a  priest  of  the  Church.  How 
different,  but  how  true  is  the  note  struck  by  Aubrey  de 


120  ENNYSOJV  AND  AUBREY  DE    VERE. 

Vere!     Becket  has  been  just  made  primate,  and  he  bursts 
into  the  splendid  speech  to  Herbert  of  Bosham: 

"  Herbert  !  my  Herbert ! 

High  visions,  mine  in  youth,  upbraid  me  now  ; 
I  dreamed  of  sanctities  redeemed  from  shame  ; 
Abuses  crushed  ;  all  sacred  offices 
Reserved  for  spotless  hands.     Again  I  see  them  ; 
I  see  God's  realm  so  bright,  each  English  home 
Sharing  that  glory  basks  amid  its  peace  : 
I  see  the  clear  flame  on  the  poor  man's  hearth 
From  God's  own  altar  lit  ;  the  angelic  childhood  ; 
The  chaste,  strong  youth  ;  the  reverence  of  white  hairs  : 
"Tis  this  Religion  means.     O  Herbert !  Herbert  ! 
We  must  secure  her  this.     Her  rights,  the  lowest 
Shall  in  my  hand  be  safe.     I  will  not  suffer 
The  pettiest  stone  in  castle,  grange,  or  mill, 
The  humblest  clod  of  English  earth,  one  time 
A  fief  of  my  great  mother,  Canterbury, 
To  rest  caitiff's  booty.     Herbert,  Herbert, 
Had  I  foreseen,  with  what  a  vigilant  care 
Had  I  built  up  my  soul  !  " 

His  pupil,  young  Prince  Henry,  is  heard  singing  with- 
out, and  he  says,  in  contrast  to  the  whines  put  into  his 
mouth  by  Tennyson : 

"  Hark  to  that  truant's  song  !    We  celibates 
Are  strangely  captured  by  this  love  of  children 
Nature's  revenge — say,  rather  compensation." 

Catholics  whose  childhood  has  been  passed  among  re- 
ligious will  recognize  the  truth  of  this,  as  well  as  the  false- 
ness of  Tennyson's  point  of  view.  Exiled  in  the  Abbey 
of  Pontigny,  after  the  king  has  poured  his  wrath  on  him 
and  his  kindred  for  defending  the  liberties  of  the  Church 
and  the  people,  he  does  not  break  out  into  wild  regret  or 


TENNYSON  AND  AUBREY  DE    VEKE.          121 

sentimental  sighs.     There  is  manly  tenderness  in  his  tone 
to  the  abbot: 

"  My  mother,  when  I  went  to  Paris  first, 
A  slender  scholar  bound  on  quest  of  learning. 
Girdling  my  gown  collegiate,  wept  full  sore. 
Then  laid  on  me  this  hest :  both  early  and  late 
To  love  Christ's  Mother  and  the  poor  of  Christ. 
That  so  her  prayer  in  heaven  and  theirs  on  earth, 
Beside  me  moving  as  I  walked  its  streets, 
Might  shield  me  from  its  sins." 

ABBOT  : 

"  Men  say  your  mother 
Loved  the  poor  well,  and  still  on  festivals, 
Laying  her  growing  babe  in  counter-scale. 
Heaped  up  an  equal  weight  of  clothes  and  food, 
Which  unto  them  she  gave." 

It  would  be  necessary  to  apologize  for  giving  many 
quotations,  tempting  as  their  beauty  is,  were  it  not  for  the 
fact  that  mere  allusion  to  them  would  not  suffice.  It  is 
regrettable  that  among  Catholics — and  the  present  writer 
speaks  from  observation — Tennyson's  "  Becket,"  printed 
in  1884,  is  better  known  than  De  Vere's  "St.  Thomas," 
an  American  edition  of  which  appeared  in  1876. 

Aubrey  de  Vere's  conception  of  the  motives  of  the 
martyred  primate  is  worthy  of  a  Catholic  poet.  Tenny- 
son grasps  only  faintly  the  Christianity  of  A  Becket.  It 
does  not  come  home  to  him,  it  does  not  touch  him,  be- 
cause in  his  experience  he  has  never  come  in  contact  with 
the  inner  life  of  a  devout  priest,  and  therefore  his  imagi- 
nation is  not  equal  to  the  task  of  evolving  one.  Of  the 
real  meaning  of  asceticism  he  is  entirely  ignorant.  The 


122  7YTA~Ar  KSa-V  A. YD   AL'BREY  DE    VERE. 

pride  and  the  impatience  of  his  Becket  are  only  equalled 
by  the  self-conceit  of  his  St.  Simon  Stylites. 

In  the  dialogue  between  the  abbot  of  Pontigny  and  the 
exiled  archbishop,  just  quoted,  there  is  an  example  of 
Catholic  belief  which,  like  sustaining  gold  threads  in  a 
tissue  of  silk,  runs  through  the  wonderful  tragedy  of  Ue 
Vere's.  The  chancellor  is  made  the  primate ;  he  becomes 
less  gay,  less  worldly,  more  given  to  the  building-up  of  his 
soul  and  his  mind,  and  more  spiritual.  He,  almost  alone, 
stands  up  for  the  Church  and  the  people.  Time-serving 
court  bishops  cower;  the  very  court  of  Rome — but  not 
the  Church — seems  to  desert  him.  The  pope  himself 
sends  him  the  habit  of  the  monks  of  Pontigny,  with  the 
cowl  filled  with  snow — "the  pope  knows  well  some  heads 
are  hot."  The  archbishop  endures  it  all  with  the  meek- 
ness of  a  saint,  yet  with  the  dignity  of  a  man.  Through 
all  trials,  up  to  the  time  of  martyrdom,  he  seems  marked 
for  special  grace.  He  is  not  singularly  learned,  for  the 
practical  duties  of  the  kingdom  have  left  him  little  time 
for  study.  And  yet  he  is  well  equipped  with  fortitude  and 
his  hope  never  falters.  Why  ?  We  are  answered:  be- 
cause his  mother  has  loved  God  and  the  poor,  and  because 
he  so  loves  Christ's  poor,  following  her  behest.  This 
essentially  Catholic  point  is  accentuated  most  sharply  and 
artistically  by  the  author. 

Tennyson  draws  very  sharply  the  envious  and  the 
fawning  prelates  around  the  king,  and  his  characterization 
is  as  keen  and  delicate  as  we  have  had  every  reason  to 
expect  it  to  be.  But  the  virtuous  priests  in  "  Becket "  arc 


AXD   AUBREY  DE    VERE.  123 

certainly  a  strange  group.  We  know  that  the  Church  in 
England,  half-enslaved  by  the  state  and  burdened  with 
growing  wealth,  had  need  of  reforms  in  discipline.  Aubrey 
de  Vere,  with  a  regard  for  truth  which  has  probably  caused 
guileless  Protestants  to  expect  to  see  him  crushed  by  the 
thunder  of  Rome,  makes  the  pious  Empress  Matilda  say: 

"  I  would  your  primate 
Had  let  the  Royal  Customs  be,  and  warred 
Against  the  ill  customs  of  the  Church.     'Tis  shame 
To  ordain  a  clerk  in  name  that  lacks  a  cure, 
Whom  idleness  must  needs  ensnare  in  crime, 
Scandal — and  worse — to  screen  an  erring  clerk, 
More  fearing  clamor  than  the  cancer  slow 
Of  wily  wasting  sin.     Scandal  it  is 
When  seven  rich  benefices  load  one  priest, 
Likeliest  his  soul's  damnation." 

JOHN  OF  SALISBURY: 

"Scandals  indeed! 

And  no  true  friend  to  Thomas  is  the  man 
Who  palliates  such  abuses.     For  this  cause 
Reluctantly  he  grasped  Augustine's  staff. 
Therewith  to  smite  them  down.     Madam,  the  men 
Who  brand  them  most  are  those  who  breed  the  scandals. 
The  primate  warred  on  such.     The  king,  to  shield  them, 
Invoked  the  Royal  Customs." 

We  understand  all  this,  and  no  Catholic  of  to-day  at- 
tempts to  palliate  abuses  which  crept  into  the  discipline 
of  the  Church.  It  is  evident  that  Aubrey  de  Vere  does 
not  whiten  the  courtiers  and  sycophants,  although  clothed 
with  episcopal  authority,  who  shrank  from  St.  Thomas  at 
the  king's  scowl.  He  is  even  more  pitiless  to  them  than 
Tennyson.  Tennyson,  however,  does  not  seem  to  see  the 
anomaly  of  making  an  archbishop — a  saint  canonized  by 


124          TENNYSON  AND  AUBREY  DE    VEKE. 

Rome — show  an  insubordinate  and  mutinous  spirit  which 
almost  justifies  the  hot  words  that  King  Henry  is  made  to 
address  to  him : 

No  !     God  forbid  and  turn  me  Mussulman  ! 
No  god  but  one,  and  Mahomet  is  his  prophet. 
But  for  your  Christian,  look  you,  you  shall  have 
None  other  god  but  me — me,  Thomas,  son 
Of  Gilbert  Becket,  London  merchant." 

Tennyson's  Becket  has  a  most  persistent  habit  of  rep- 
artee. The  repartee  is  sometimes  very  apt,  but  very  un- 
saintly.  Indeed,  if  the  laureate  had  made  Wycliff  the  hero 
of  his  tragedy,  some  of  the  speeches  would  be  in  keeping 
with  the  sentiments  of  that  over-glorified  Lollard. 

It  may  be  said  that  Tennyson's  idea  of  St.  Thomas  is 
very  human,  and  that  the  poet  has  well  depicted  in  rush- 
ing words  a  proud  nature  towering  and  neither  bending 
nor  breaking.  Tennyson's  Becket  is  well  enough  painted 
from  that  point  of  view.  There  are  some  exquisitely  fine 
natural  touches.  But  the  poet-laureate  had  no  right  to 
attempt  to  depict  the  character  of  St.  Thomas  merely 
from  that  point  of  view.  Pride  and  enthusiasm  would 
never  have  made  a  Christian  martyr  of  Thomas  a  Becket, 
and  it  is  the  full  understanding  of  this  that,  leaving  out 
other  qualities,  makes  Aubrey  de  Vere  the  greater  poet 
and  the  truer  delineator  of  a  hero  whom  it  is  almost  sacri- 
lege to  misrepresent  for  the  sake  of  a  theatrical  succes 
destime.  The  character  of  St.  Thomas  a  Becket  belongs 
to  Christendom  and  to  history,  and  the  poet-laureate, 
rushing  in  where  angels  fear  to  tread,  not  caring  for  or 
understanding  the  sacredness  of  his  subject,  has  done  both 


TEXXYSON  AND  AUBREY  DE    VERE.          125 

Christendom  and  art  a  wrong  by  dragging  an  effigy  of  the 
martyred  primate  in  the  dust.  It  used  to  be  the  fashion 
to  overlook  the  liberties  that  poets  and  romance-writers 
took  with  history;  but  since  historians  have  become 
romancers,  and  even  adopted  the  adjectives  of  the  poets, 
we  are  more  exacting.  No  excuse  can  be  offered  for 
Tennyson's  falsification  of  the  character  of  A  Becket — 
not  even  an  excuse  that  he  needed  dramatic  color.  He 
had  a  noble  figure  and  a  sublime  time,  and  he  belittled 
them  both,  because  he  would  not  understand  them,  or 
because  the  success  of  a  play  he  had  adapted  from  Boc- 
caccio made  him  anxious  for  the  applause  of  the  frequenters 
of  theatres. 

Tennyson,  echoing,  perhaps,  some  sectarian  preacher, 
causes  the  pope's  almoner  to  suggest  treachery  to  the 
archbishop  when  the  king  is  urging  him  to  sign  the  articles 
against  the  freedom  of  the  Church.  Philip  de  Eleemosyna 
tempts  the  archbishop  to  grievous  sin  by  whispering  that 
the  pope  wants  him  to  commit  it : 

"  Cannot  the  pope  absolve  tliee  if  thou  sign  ?" 

This  might  be  forgiven  in  a  tract  against  popery,  on  the 
score  of  ignorance ;  but  what  plea  can  be  offered  for  it  in 
the  careful,  overwrought  work  of  a  poet  whose  fame  is 
world  wide  and  whose  knowledge  should  not  be  much 
narrower  ? 

Becket  bursts  out  in  this  speech: 

"  Map  scoffs  at  Rome.  I  all  but  hold  with  Map. 
Save  for  myself  no  Rome  were  left  in  England  : 
All  had  been  his.  Why  should  this  Rome,  this  Rome, 


126          TENNYSON  AND  AUBREY  DE    VERE. 

Still  choose  Barabbas  rather  than  the  Christ, 
Absolve  the  left-hand  thief  and  damn  the  right  ? 
Take  fees  of  tyranny,  wink  at  sacrilege, 
Which  even  Peter  had  not  dared  ?  condemn 
The  blameless  exile  ? " 

Is  this  the  language  of  a  Christian  hero  ?  Are  these 
revilings  of  the  Power  he  is  willing  to  die  for  consistent 
naturally  or  true  artistically  ?  Herbert  of  Bosham,  the 
archbishop's  faithful  friend,  a  devout  cleric  and  a  sensible 
man  according  to  good  authorities,  is  made  to  drivel : 

"  Thee,  thou  holy  Thomas, 
I  would  that  thou  hadst  been  the  Holy  Father." 

To  which  Tennyson's  archbishop  complacently  replies : 

"  I  would  have  done  my  most  to  keep  Rome  holy  : 
I  would  have  made  Rome  know  she  still  is  Rome, 
Who  stands  aghast  at  her  eternal  self 
And  shakes  at  mortal  kings — her  vacillation, 
Avarice,  craft.     O  God!  how  many  an  innocent 
Has  left  his  bones  upon  the  way  to  Rome, 
Unwept,  uncared  for  !     Yea,  on  mine  self 
The  king  had  had  no  power,  except  for  Rome. 
'Tis  not  the  king  who  is  guilty  of  mine  exile, 
But  Rome,  Rome,  Rome  ! " 

Was  there  ever  an  honest  and  faithful  priest  and  friend 
so  misrepresented  by  a  poet  dazzled  by  the  glare  of  the 
footlights  ?  Was  ever  a  saint  and  martyr  more  besmeared 
with  mock  heroic  pride  and  selfishness  ? 

Chroniclers  tell  us  that  St.  Thomas  was  serene  and  dig- 
nified in  all  trials,  but  "  Becket's "  serenity  is  frequently 
swept  away  in  gusts  of  evil  temper,  and  he  is  quite  as 
foul-mouthed  as  the  enemies  that  bait  him.  The  prelates 
around  him  wrangle  like  school-boys,  and  the  scene  at 


TENA'YSOA"  AND  AUDREY  DE    VERE.          I2^ 

Northampton  is  simply  a  free  quarrel.  Aubrey  de  Vere, 
comprehending  that  the  key  to  St.  Thomas'  conduct  must 
be  found  in  a  supernatural  manner,  avoids  the  almost 
brutal  mistakes  of  the  laureate.  The  scene  of  the  signing 
of  the  Royal  Customs  by  A  Becket  was  really  at  Claren- 
don; Tennyson  transfers  it  to  Roehampton.  De  Vere 
treats  this  scene  with  keen  perception  and  admirable  ret- 
icence. The  archbishop  does  not  forget  himself  or  burst 
into  violent  assertions.  He  is  made  to  explain  the  episode 
of  the  almoner,  which  Tennyson  treats  in  a  truly  evangeli  - 
cal  way.  He  tells  how  he  was  deluded  into  signing  the 
articles.  It  is  very  different  from  the  version  in  which  the 
pope's  envoy  whispers  that  one  may  sin  freely  and  be  sure 
of  absolution ! 

' '  Came  next  the  papal  envoy  from  Aumone, 
With  word  the  pope,  moved  by  the  troublous  time, 
Willed  my  submission  to  the  royal  will. 
This  was  the  second  fraud  ;  remains  the  third. 
My  lords,  the  Customs  named  till  then  were  few. 
In  evil  hour  I  yielded — pledged  the  Church, 
Alas !  to  what  I  know  not.     On  the  instant 
The  king  commanded,  '  Write  ye  down  these  laws.' 
And  soon,  too  soon,  a  parchment  pre-ordained 
Upon  our  table  lay,  a  scroll  inscribed 
With  usages  sixteen,  whereof  most  part 
Were  shamefuller  than  the  worst  discussed  till  then. 
My  lords,  too  late  I  read  that  scroll :  I  spurned  it ; 
I  swore  by  Him  who  made  the  heavens  and  earth 
That  never  seal  of  mine  should  touch  that  bond, 
Not  mine,  but  juggle-changed.     My  lords,  that  eve 
A  truthful  servant  and  a  fearless  one, 
Who  bears  my  cross — and  taught  me,  too,  to  bear  one — 
Llewellen  is  his  name,  remembered  be  it ! — 
Probed  me,  and  probed  with  sharp  and  searching  words; 


128          TF.ATAn'SON  AND  AUBREY  DE    VERE. 

And  as  the  sun  my  sin  before  me  stood. 
My  lords,  for  forty  days  I  kept  my  fast, 
And  held  me  from  the  offering  of  the  Mass, 
And  sat  in  sackcloth  ;  till  the  pope  sent  word, 
Arise  ;  be  strong  and  walk  ! '  And  I  arose, 
And  hither  came  ;  and  here  confession  make 
That  till  the  cleansed  leper  once  again 
Take,  voluntary,  back  his  leprosy, 
I  with  those  Royal  Customs  stain  no  more 
My  soul,  which  Christ  hath  washed." 

This  is  not  the  talk  of  Tennyson's  ill-tempered  and 
sharp-tongued  Becket,  but  the  sense,  if  not  the  exact 
words,  of  the  real  Becket.  De  Vere's  consummate  skill 
in  building  up  bit  by  bit  the  character  of  the  archbishop, 
in  accordance  with  the  character  given  him  by  authentic 
writers,  is  worthy  of  careful  analysis.  The  primate  asked 
of  his  servants  their  honest  opinions  of  this  conduct,  and 
accepted  opinions  thus  frankly  tendered  as  his  guide.  The 
flattery  of  Tennyson's  Herbert  of  Bosham,  so  compla- 
cently swallowed  by  the  laureate's  political  primate,  would 
have  brought  down  the  censure  of  the  real  St.  Thomas. 
De  Vere  characterizes  Llewellen,  the  Welsh  cross-bearer, 
by  a  nice  touch: 

"  The  tables  groaned  with  gold  ;  I  scorned  the  pageant, 
The  Norman  pirates  and  the  Saxon  boors 
Sat  round  and  fed  ;  I  hated  them  alike, 
The  rival  races,  one  in  sin.     Alone 
We  Britons  tread  our  native  soil." 

In  the  death-scene  Tennyson  sins  unpardonably.  He 
shows  us  the  archbishop  rushing  to  his  death  from  obstinacy 
and  want  of  self-control.  De  Brito,  Fitzurse,  and  De 
Tracy  have  come  to  put  into  act  the  hasty  words  of  the 


TEXXYSOtf  AND  AUBXEY  DE    VERE.          129 

king  and  to  murder  the  archbishop.  Becket  rails  at  them 
bitterly,  throws  Fitzurse  from  him  and  pitches  De  Tracy 
"  headlong,"  after  the  manner  of  the  muscular  Christian 
heroes  beloved  of  the  late  Rev.  Charles  Kingsley.  He 
even  sneers  at  the  monks  whom  Tennyson  makes  to  flee. 
"  Our  dovecote  flown,"  he  says — "  I  cannot  tell  why 
monks  should  all  be  cowards."  He  still  repeats  the  sneer, 
until  Grim,  whose  arm  is  broken  by  a  blow  aimed  at 
Becket,  reminds  him  that  he  is  a  monk.  Rosamond  rushes 
in  and  begs  the  murderers  to  spare  the  archbishop,  and  then 
he  is  slain,  just  as  a  thunderstorm  breaks;  this  climax, 
which  in  Aubrey  de  Vere's  tragedy  follows  strictly  the 
authentic  account  of  the  sacrilege,  is  made  trivial  by  a  silly 
coup  de  theatre. 

There  is  nothing  in  Tennyson's  "  Becket "  to  compare 
with  the  lyrics  in  "The  Princess,"  or  even  the  lute  song 
in  "Queen  Mary;"  but  they  are  airy  and  expressive  of 
the  mood  of  the  persons  in  whose  mouths  they  are  placed. 
Queen  Eleanor  sings : 

"  Over  !  the  sweet  summer  closes, 

The  reign  of  the  roses  is  done  ; 
Over  and  gone  with  the  roses, 
And  over  and  gone  with  the  sun. 

"  Over  :  the  sweet  summer  closes, 

And  never  a  flower  at  the  close  ; 
Over  and  gone  with  the  roses, 

And  winter  again  and  the  snows  " 

It  is  quite  in  accordance  with  the  mood  of  the  light- 
minded  queen,  who  is  quite  past  the  August  of  life,  who 
9 


130          TENNYSON  AND  AUBREY  DE    VERB. 

has  been  wedded  more  for  her  rich  possessions  than  her- 
self, and  who  is  far  from  her  gay  debonair  Aquitaine. 

Queen  Eleanor  does  not  sing  in  the  similar  scene  in 
Aubrey  de  Vere's  tragedy.  She  turns  to  a  trouvere  and 
asks  him  to  sing.  And  he  begins : 

"  I  make  not  songs,  but  only  find  ; 

Love  following  still  the  circling  sun, 
His  carol  casts  on  every  wind, 
And  other  singer  is  there  none. 

"  I  follow  Love,  though  far  he  flies  ; 

I  sing  his  song,  at  random  found, 
Like  plume  some  bird-of-paradise 
Drops,  passing,  on  our  dusky  bound. 

"  In  some,  methinks,  at  times  there  glows 

The  passion  of  some  heavenlier  sphere  • 
These  too  I  sing  ;  but  sweetest  those 
I  dare  not  sing  and  sweetly  hear. " 

This  is  a  smooth  setting  of  a  thought  which  both  Keats 
and  Maurice  de  Guerin,  and  no  doubt  all  poets,  have  tried 
to  express ;  but  Queen  Eleanor,  and  perhaps  the  sensitive 
reader,  finds  it  lacking  as  a  lyric.  The  trouvere  then  sings 
another  about  Phoebus  and  Daphne.  Queen  Eleanor  very 
aptly  cries: 

"A  love-song  that !     An  icicle  it  is 
Added  to  winter." 

But  if  Aubrey  de  Vere's  lyrical  touch  is  hard  and  cold 
in  comparison  with  Tennyson's,  even  when  Tennyson's 
lyrics  are  not  his  best,  he  has  the  advantage,  in  all  the 
higher  attributes  of  a  dramatic  poet,  in  limning  Queen 
Eleanor,  who  was  a  creature  of  the  senses,  yet  still  a 
princess  and  of  no  mean  capabilities.  Tennyson  gives 


TENNYSON  AND  AUBREY  DE    VERE.          131 

the  impression  that  she  was  half-crazed — a  kind  of  Pro- 
vencal Bacchante,  and  her  first  entrance  destroys  all 
respect  for  her  sanity. 

Aubrey  de  Vere's  "  Saint  Thomas  of  Canterbury  "  has  a 
foil  in  "  Becket "  which,  by  contrast,  makes  it  glow  and 
seem  more  full  of  lustre  and  color,  as  a  diamond  of  flaw- 
less purity  when  put  in  a  circle  of  brilliants.  It  is  hard  to 
account  for  the  blindness  of  the  poet  of  the  "  Idyls  of  the 
King  "  in  venturing  to  attempt  a  work  that  had  already 
been  perfectly  done.  Aubrey  de  Vere's  place  as  a  great 
dramatic  poet  was  settled  when  "Alexander  the  Great " 
appeared.  "  Saint  Thomas  of  Canterbury  "  was  not  needed 
to  teach  the  world  what  he  could  do.  But  he  has  given 
it  out  of  the  abundance  of  his  heart ;  and  we  Catholics, 
who  have  the  key  of  faith  with  which  to  unlock  its  mys- 
teries, which  are  unknown  to  a  poet  of  even  Tennyson's 
insight,  may  thank  God  that  he  has  raised  up  a  seer  at 
once  strong,  pure,  true  to  his  ideals  both  in  religion  and 
art,  more  than  worthy  to  wear  the  mantle  that  fell  from 
the  shoulders  of  Wordsworth,  and  with  much  of  the  divine 
fire  that  made  Shakspeare  an  arbiter  of  English  thought 
and  speech. 


LECTURE  VII. 

SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS. 

I  HOPE  you  will  forgive  me  for  not  using  the  word 
"  poetess  "  in  this  lecture.  In  my  opinion  a  woman  who 
writes  poetry  should  not  be  ashamed  to  be  called  by  the 
name  which  distinguishes  Dante,  Calderon,  Shakspeare, 
Longfellow  and  many  other  immortals. 

This  century  is  the  century  of  women  writers.  The 
results  of  the  great  social  change  consequent  from  the 
discovery  of  America  and  the  French  Revolution  are  more 
apparent  now  than  ever  in  the  education  of  young  girls 
and  the  status  of  women.  Our  grandparents  looked  with 
horror  on  the  probability  of  a  woman's  working  for  a  liv- 
ing or  working  at  all,  except  in  the  household.  She  could 
embroider  hideous  samples,  draw  buttercups  and  daisies, 
paint  landscapes  in  which  the  cows  might  have  been 
horses  and  the  lambs  dogs;  she  was  expected  to  be 
"sweetly  pretty,"  and  ivy-like  and  clinging;  her  proper 
dress  was  supposed  to  be  white  muslin ;  she  wore  thin 
slippers  and,  on  festive  occasions,  a  wreath  of  roses ;  she 
sang  "  Lightly  the  Troubadour  Touched  his  Guitar  "  and 
played  "  The  Battle  of  Prague."  Her  fathers  and  brothers 
worked  for  her ;  but  no  matter  how  clever  she  was,  or  how 
desirous  of  not  burdening  them  she  might  be,  it  was  not 


SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS.  133 

permitted  that  she  should  work  outside  the  family  circle. 
To  be  other  than  this,  social  convention  decreed,  was  to 
be  "  strong-minded."  And  to  be  "  strong-minded  "  was  to 
be  wicked,  or  worse  than  wicked.  But  all  that  is  changed 
now.  Young  women  are  no  longer  content  to  be  ama- 
teurs. They  have  learned  that  society  has  become  more 
exacting.  The  young  woman  of  the  present  time  cannot 
be  satisfied  with  such  accomplishments  as  the  making  of 
wax  fruit  and  flowers,  or  the  playing  of  a  fantasia  with  a 
note  dropped  out  of  every  fourth  bar.  She  endeavors  to 
acquire  a  specialty;  for,  if  she  be  rich — so  uncertain  is 
the  duration  of  fortunes  in  our  country — she  may  need  it 
to  help  her  live,  and  perhaps — who  knows  ? — to  enable 
her  to  support  a  husband  in  the  luxuries  to  which  he  has 
been  accustomed.  For  sometimes  the  American  girl  elopes, 
and  in  that  case  she  soon  thanks  Heaven  that  she  has 
been  taught  to  earn  her  own  bread. 

There  still  remains  in  that  small  stratum  of  society  in 
which  idleness  is  cultivated  as  the  principal  grace,  a  pre- 
judice against  young  women  who  work  for  their  living. 
But  a  prejudice  founded  on  no  principle  is  disreputable. 
And  even  this  prejudice,  which  is  really  not  worth  con- 
sidering, melts  before  talent  and  industry.  The  musician, 
the  composer,  the  singer,  the  artist,  the  writer  are  the 
hardest  of  workers,  and  yet  society — meaning  the  would-be 
exclusive  class — is  only  too  eager  to  welcome  and,  unfor- 
tunately, sometimes  to  spoil  them ;  so  that  there  is  no  bar 
now  to  a  woman's  cultivation  of  the  best  that  is  in  her. 
Twenty-five  years  ago,  the  woman  who  could  play  a  great 


134  SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS. 

composition  of  Chopin  or  of  Berlioz  was  a  rarity,  a  phe- 
nomenon. Now  there  are  hundreds  in  every  city  who  can 
do  it.  Every  year  the  publishers  of  the  magazines  receive 
cleverer  and  cleverer  illustrations  from  young  women. 
Young  women  no  longer  paint  a  castle  on  the  Rhine  with 
a  bridge  in  the  foreground  spanning  the  river,  done  in 
bright  blue  with  yellow  high  lights  and  weeping  willows  of 
arsenic  green  dipping  into  the  turgid  stream.  That  be- 
longs to  the  past  of  the  sampler  and  the  dog3  and  cats 
worked  in  Berlin  wool. 

MRS.  BROWNING. 

Similarly,  the  young  lady  is  no  longer  satisfied  with 
composition;  subject:  "Sunshine."  She  wants  to  get 
beyond  ihat,  and  she  does.  If  she  have  literary  talent, 
if  she  cultivate  her  taste,  if  she  pay  attention  to  form, — 
for  literature  is  an  art  governed  by  rules  as  strict  as  those 
which  govern  painting  or  music, — she  may  earn,  not  only 
position  in  the  world  which  recognizes  all  good  work,  es- 
pecially in  literature,  but  an  honorable  income.  Since 
Miss  Austen  and  Miss  Edgeworth's  time,  the  number  of 
women  writers  has  steadily  increased.  We  have  too  many 
of  them,  unfortunately, — too  many  who  have  sacrificed  all 
that  best  becomes  a  woman  for  the  sake  of  sensationalism 
and  money-getting.  But,  if  we  have  Ouida,  "  The  Duch- 
ess," Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox,  and  the  vulgarest  of  them  all, 
— Ame"lie  Rives  on  one  side,  we  have  Adelaide  Procter, 
Christian  Reid,  Eleanor  Donnelly,  Lady  Georgiana  Ful- 
lerton,  Mrs.  Craven, — who,  however,  has  an  unhappy 


SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS.  135 

habit  of  making  cousins  marry  at  the  end  of  her  stories, 
— on  the  other.  George  Sand,  a  woman  who  tried  to  be 
a  man,  had  genius,  but  no  morals.  George  Eliot,  an- 
other great  woman  writer,  had  genius,  but  no  religion. 
Their  lives  were  sad  and  their  deaths  sad.  They  are 
warnings  to  women  that  even  genius  and  success  cannot 
compensate  for  their  unsexing  themselves.  A  woman 
is  admirable  in  proportion  to  her  womanliness.  And 
a  poet  who  wrote  in  prose  has  said  that  a  woman  with- 
out religion  is  like  a  rose  without  perfume.  Among  the 
women  of  our  century  there  is  one  English  woman 
poet  who  towers  above  the  rest — a  woman  who  expressed 
great  thoughts;  who,  aside  from  her  philosophy  and  her 
Italian  politics,  deserves  a  high  place  in  that  private  liter- 
ary oratory  which  each  of  us  should  erect.  I  speak  of 
Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning.  If  ever  any  poet  stood  in  the 
white  light  of  the  beauty  which  we  call  poetry,  it  was  Mrs. 
Browning.  Her  thoughts  were  as  fire  and  her  words  were 
as  fire.  You  remember  the  majestic  opening  of  her  "  Vir- 
gin Mary  to  the  Child  Jesus."  It  was  suggested  by  Mil- 
ton's 

But  see  the  Virgin  blest 
Has  laid  her  Babe  to  rest." 

Mrs.  Browning's  prelude  runs  thus: 

"  Sleep,  sleep,  mine  Holy  One! 
My  flesh,  my  Lord! — what  name?   I  do  not  know, 
A  name  that  seemeth  not  too  high  or  low, 

Too  far  from  me  or  Heaven. 
My  Jesus,  that  is  best  !  that  word  being  given 
By  the  majestic  angel  whose  command 
Was  softly  as  a  man's  beseeching  said 


136  SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS. 

When  I  and  all  the  earth  appeared  to  stand 

In  the  great  overflow 
Of  light  celestial  from  his  wings  and  head. 

Sleep,  sleep,  my  Saving  One." 

And  the  cry  of  the  children : 

' '  Do  you  hear  the  children  weeping,  O  my  brothers, 

Ere  the  sorrow  comes  with  years  ? 
They  are  leaning  their  young  heads  against  their  mothers, 

And  that  cannot  stop  their  tears. 
The  young  lambs  are  bleating  in  the  meadows, 

The  young  birds  are  chirping  in  their  nest, 
The  young  fauns  are  playing  with  the  shadows, 

The  young  flowers  are  blowing  toward  the  west — 
But  the  young,  young  children,  O  my  brothers, 

They  are  weeping  bitterly  ' 
They  are  weeping  in  the  playtime  of  the  others, 
In  the  country   of  the  free  ! " 

Spontaneous  as  Mrs.  Browning's  poetry  seems,  it  would 
have  been  made  greater  by  a  finer  art,  although  the  poet 
made  herself  a  scholar  and  her  poetry  was  greatly  in- 
fluenced by  the  Greeks. 

I  must  warn  you  that,  in  a  lesser  poet,  Mrs.  Browning's 
faults  of  art  would  not  be  tolerated.  She  made  herself  a 
scholar,  it  is  true ;  she  was  influenced  by  Theocritus,  as 
Tennyson  was ;  but  not  so  much  by  the  perfect  symmetry 
of  the  Greeks  as  by  their  thoughts.  I  regret  that  most 
women  poets  are  careless  just  where  one  would  expect  to 
find  them  careful — in  matters  of  detail.  Mrs.  Browning's 
rhythm  and  rhyme  are  sometimes  so  bad  as  to  put  the 
critical  reader  or  the  musical  reader  out  of  patience.  It 
must  be  said,  too,  that  Mrs.  Browning's  characters  in  her 
long  poems,  "Aurora  Leigh  "  and  "  Lady  Geraldine's  Court- 


SOME    H'OME.Y    WRITERS.  137 

ship  "  are  unreal.  They  are  "  imagination  at  a  white  heat." 
Lady  Geraldine  is  an  unwomanly  woman ;  and  Romney 
Leigh  is  a  very  weak-minded  fool.  Nevertheless,  looked 
at  as  a  poet,  not  as  a  story-teller  or  an  artist, — in  the  sense 
that  Tennyson  is  an  artist, — Mrs.  Browning  is  the  greatest 
of  the  women  poets.  Mrs.  Browning,  when  criticised  for 
her  bad  rhymes,  replied  that  poetry  with  her  was  not 
"reverie,  but  art."  If  this  be  true,  we  can  only  conclude 
that  she  had  a  very  poor  ear  for  sound.  Somebody  made 
a  list  of  the  defective  rhymes  in  "  Lady  Geraldine's  Court- 
ship." For  instance: 

"Door-ways — poor-ways;  nature — satire;  woman — gloaming;  in- 
vited— freighted  ;  terrace — heiress  ;  symbol — humble  ;  islands — si- 
lence ;  making — speaking  ;  chamber — remember  ;  coming — woman  ; 
weakness  —  blackness;  mercies  —  curses;  earthly — worthy," — and 
many  more. 

Mrs.  Browning's  love  and  sympathy  for  children  are 
pronounced  in  her  poems.  If  Mrs.  Browning  gained 
Heaven — and  who  can  tell  ? — it  was  through  her  love  for 
the  poor  and  of  helpless  little  children.  Mrs.  Browning's 
art  was  not  perfect ;  but  her  voice,  with  a  discord  now 
and  then,  came  straight  from  her  heart.  If  you  read 
nothing  else  of  Mrs.  Browning,  read  at  least  "At  Cowper's 
Grave,"  or  "  The  Sleep," — written  on  that  Scriptural  pas- 
sage so  beloved  of  poets, — "  He  Giveth  His  Beloved 
Sleep."  In  Mrs.  Browning's  "  Vision  of  Poets  "  there  is 
a  strong  suggestion  of  Tennyson,  as  there  is  in  Mrs.  Mey- 
nell's  "  Sonnet  to  a  Daisy,"  which  I  shall  speak  of  later. 

Mrs.  Browning  owes  almost  as  much  to  Theocritus  as 
Tennyson.  And  her  paraphrase  on  the  idyls  of  the 


138  SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS. 

Syracusan  poet  are  very  charming.  Faulty  in  technique, 
she  is  nevertheless  an  artist.  One  of  the  lessons  of  her 
life  which  I  may  read  to  you,  young  ladies,  is :  never  to 
be  satisfied  with  mediocrity;  to  cultivate  your  talents  to 
their  utmost,  and  to  leave  no  chance  for  mental  improve- 
ment pass  by.  I  am  not  recommending  the  pursuit  of 
poetry  as  a  profession ;  no  amount  of  application  will  make 
a  poet ;  but  no  poet,  no  matter  how  high  his  genius  is, 
can  afford  to  neglect  the  rules  of  art.  I  may  here  quote 
for  you  the  opinion  of  one  of  the  oldest  and  the  most 
gifted  of  our  living  American  poets,  Mr.  C.  H.  Stoddard, 
on  the  relations  of  poetry  to  the  art  of  expression.  He 
says: 

"We  won't  quote  Flaccus,  although  he  is  always  worth  quoting  ; 
but  the  best  thing  an  amateur  poet  can  do  is  to  rewrite  and  rewrite 
his  verses,  over  and  over  and  over  again,  seeking  out  the  smallest  er- 
rors, and  occasionally  resorting  to  bore  a  friend  with  reading  them, 
and  making  all  the  changes  that  friends  suggest — perhaps  perma- 
nently, perhaps  only  temporarily.  By  that  time  the  would-be  poet 
will  be  disgusted  with  his  own  work.  That  is  the  moment  when  it 
becomes  fit  for  anybody  else  to  read,  if  there  was  a  germ  of  poetry  in 
it  to  begin  with.  After  that  the  aspirant  for  the  bay  may  lay  away 
his  mutilated  treasure  as  long  as  he  can  stand  it,  then  bring  it  out 
and  rewrite  it  and  polish  it, — and  send  it  to  a  newspaper  or  magazine 
with  a  safe  bet  of  ten  to  one  that  it  will  be  rejected.  Out  of  the  throes 
of  many  such  workers  a  good  poem  might  occasionally  come  forth — 
say  once  in  a  hundred  times.  The  proportion  now  is  about  one  in  a 
million." 

This  is  rather  too  severe ;  but  it  has  truth  in  it.  To 
console,  I  may  say  that  no  true  poem  ever  lacked  a  hear- 
ing. If  the  Milton  is  inglorious,  it  is  because  he  is  mute ; 
and  if  a  great  thought  which  you  have  does  not  reach  the 
people,  it  is  because  you  are  too  slothful  to  cut  your  rough 


SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS.  139 

diamond  into  shape.  A  perfect  poem  is  a  perfect  gem, 
with  each  facet  cut — God  knows  with  what  pain — until  it 
reflects  the  light  on  all  sides. 

Miss  PROCTER. 

I  am  anxious  to  call  your  attention  to  two  writers  whom 
you  know  and  love  already,  Adelaide  Procter  and  Lady 
Georgiana  Fullerton.  There  are  two  poets  whom  the 
high  literary  sect  profess  to  underrate, — Longfellow  and 
Adelaide  Procter.  Longfellow  has  no  superior  among  our 
modern  poets;  and  if  Adelaide  Procter  is  a  lesser  light 
than  Elizabeth  Browning,  it  is  only  in  the  degree  that  the 
flame  of  a  prairie  fire  is  more  startling  than  the  glow  of  the 
wood  in  the  grate  at  home.  The  splendid  spectacle  en- 
trances for  a  time ;  but  we  are  never  weary  of  the  steady 
glow  of  the  fire  on  the  hearth.  If,  speaking  to  you,  who 
may  yet  make  names  in  literature,  I  were  asked  to  give 
you  two  models,  I  should  name  Adelaide  Procter  and 
Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton. 

I  presume  you  all  know  some  of  Adelaide  Procter's 
poems  by  heart.  "  The  Lost  Chord  "  has  been  sung  even, 
to  quote  Tom  Moore,  "along  the  streets  of  Ispahan." 
You  know  the  last  stanza  of  "  Maximus:  " 

"  Blessed  are  those  who  die  for  God, 

And  earn  the  Martyr  crown  of  light  ; 
Yet  he  who  lives  for  God  may  be 
A  greater  Conqueror  in  His  sight." 

"  The  Storm  "  is  famous.  "A  Parting  "  has  found  its 
echo  in  many  an  agonized  but  resigned  heart. 


14°  SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS. 

"  I  thank  you  for  the  terrible  awaking, 

And  if  reproach  seemed  hidden  in  my  pain, 
And  sorrow  seemed  to  cry  on  your  disdain, 
Know  that  my  blessing  lay  in  your  forsaking. 

"  Farewell  forever  now  :  in  peace  we  part : 
And  should  an  idle  vision  of  my  tears 
Arise  before  your  soul  in  after  years, 

"  Remember  that  I  thank  you  from  my  heart." 

And  the  divine  thought : 

' '  Pray  ;  though  the  gift  you  ask  for 

May  never  comfort  your  fears, 
May  never  repay  your  pleadings; 

Yet  pray,  and  with  hopeful  tears  ; 
An  answer,  not  that  you  long  for, 

But  diviner,  will  come  one  day; 
Your  eyes  are  too  dim  to  see  it, 

Yet  strive,  and  wait,  and  pray." 

But  why  need  I  quote  from  this  most  womanly  of  poets, 
— most  Christian  of  singers  ?  You  probably  know  or  will 
know  the  sweetest  of  her  poems  and  the  true  meaning  of 
them  better  than  I,  or  any  man,  can. 

Adelaide  Procter  was  the  daughter  of  a  poet.  Her 
father  wrote  under  the  pen-name  of  Barry  Cornwall.  He 
was  a  keen  discerner  of  talent  as  well  as  a  true  poet.  But 
he  never  guessed  that  his  daughter  had  written  anything 
until  his  friend,  Charles  Dickens,  called  his  attention  to 
one  of  her  poems.  It  was  a  strange  case  of  poetic  justice. 
Mr.  Procter  had  encouraged  Dickens  when  the  author  of 
"Nicholas  Nickleby"  was  young  and  struggling,  and 
Dickens  returned  the  favor  by  discovering  that  Barry 
Cornwall's  daughter  was  a  poet! 


SOME    WOMEX    WRITERS.  141 

Much  wrong  has  been  done  to  the  poetic  guild.  Its 
members  are  represented  as  continually  complaining  of 
the  neglect  of  the  world.  The  poet  is  supposed  to  wear 
long  hair,  to  roll  his  eyes — or  her  eyes — in  frenzy,  to  be 
queer  and  eccentric,  and  to  pounce  on  unhappy  people 
and  read  long  poems  to  them.  All  the  poets  I  have  known 
are  very  reasonable  people;  I  have  never  seen  one  of 
them  moan  in  the  moonlight  or  beat  his  breast  and  groan 
— except  when  he  had  dyspepsia. 

Adelaide  Procter  was  very  sweet-tempered  and  reason- 
able. She  never  alluded  to  herself  as  a  "  broken-hearted 
bard :  "  she  never  felt  that  the  world  neglected  her.  On 
the  contrary,  she  was  very  grateful  for  the  praise  she  re- 
ceived. She  was  modest  and  unaffected.  She  was  born 
in  1825;  she  died  in  1864.  Had  she  lived  in  our  time 
she  would  not  have  affected  "aestheticism."  Charles 
Dickens,  as  editor  of  Household  Words,  had  to  read 
many  poems.  One  day  among  a  mass  of  trash  he  found 
one  signed  by  Mary  Berwick.  He  was  pleased  with  it. 

"  How  we  came  gradually  to  establish  at  the  office  of 
Household  Words"  wrote  Dickens,  in  his  introduction 
to  Miss  Procter's  poems,  "that  we  knew  all  about  Miss 
Berwick,  I  never  discovered.  But  we  settled  somehow, 
to  our  own  satisfaction,  that  she  was  a  governess  in  a 
family;  that  she  went  to  Italy  in  that  capacity  and  re- 
turned; and  that  she  had  long  been  in  the  same  family. 
We  really  knew  nothing  whatever  of  her,  except  that  she 
was  remarkably  businesslike,  punctual,  self-reliant,  and  re- 
liable ;  so  I  suppose  we  insensibly  invented  the  rest.  For 


142  SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS. 

myself,  my  mother  was  not  a  more  real  personage  than  Miss 
Berwick,  the  governess,  became." 

Miss  Berwick  turned  out  to  be  Adelaide  Procter.  One 
day,  about  Christmas,  1854,  Dickens  went  to  dine  with 
his  old  friend  Barry  Cornwall.  He  had  the  proofs  of  the 
Christmas  number  of  Household  Words  with  him.  He 
pointed  out  a  very  pretty  poem.  Next  day  he  learned 
that  he  had  spoken  to  the  writer  of  the  poems  in  her 
mother's  presence.  It  was  in  this  unobtrusive  way,  as 
a  lily  of  the  valley  lifts  itself  slowly  and  fills  the  air  with 
perfume  before  we  see  it,  that  Adelaide  Procter  began  that 
career  of  praying,  working,  and  waiting  which  has  en- 
deared her  to  the  hearts  of  the  English-speaking  world. 
She,  like  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton,  was  a  convert  to 
the  Catholic  Church. 

The  name  of  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton  recalls  "  Lady 
Bird "  and  "  Grantly  Manor," — novels  in  their  day  as 
widely  read  as  any  of  the  popular  stories  one  sees  adver- 
tised now  in  the  public  prints.  Her  reputation  rests  on 
her  later  works.  Lady  Georgiana,  though  she  wrote  poems, 
was  not  a  poet.  We  know  her  by  her  prose  works.  But 
I  ought  first  to  speak  of  another  poet. 

MRS.  MEYNELL. 

There  are  two  sisters  in  England,  one  of  them  little 
known  in  this  country,  the  other  very  famous,  who  have 
done  work  which  ought  to  be  at  once  an  incentive  and  a 
consolation  to  other  women.  One,  Lady  Elizabeth  Butler, 
is  the  painter  of  the  famous  "  Roll  Call."  of  which  the  late 


SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS.  143 

lamented  Mother  Angela  once  showed  me  a  copy,  and 
which  she  liked  exceedingly,  as  all  the  world  did.  The 
other  is  Mrs.  Meynell,  Alice  Meynell,  the  author  of  one 
volume  of  poems.  Mrs.  Meynell,  whose  husband  is  the 
editor  of  a  weekly  paper  in  London,  has  since  her  mar- 
riage, in  1877,  written  no  poetry  I  have  seen.  But  what 
she  wrote  before  that  time  is  real  poetry,  both  in  thought 
and  in  expression.  Mrs.  Meynell — then  Miss  Alice 
Thompson — owed  her  introduction  to  the  public  to  Mr. 
Ruskin's  kindness,  whose  choice  of  poets  is  somewhat 
erratic.  It  is  strange  that  an  autocrat  who  generally 
chooses  to  praise  weak  verse  should  have  selected  the 
sweetest  and  most  artistic,  if  not  the  greatest  of  all  the 
woman  poets.  The  famous  art  critic  wrote  of  Mrs.  Mey- 
nell's  poetry: 

"  The  last  verse  of  that  perfectly  heavenly  '  Letter  from  the  Girl  to 
Her  Old  Age,'  the  whole  of  '  San  Lorenzo's  Mother,'  and  the  end  of 
the  sonnet  '  To  a  Daisy  '  are  the  finest  things  I  have  yet  seen  (or  felt) 
in  modern  verse." 

And  yet  sometimes  even  Mrs.  Meynell  fails  a  little  in 
art.  In  this  very  sonnet,  "  To  a  Daisy,"  the  word,  "  liter- 
ally "  spoils  a  line : 

"Slight  as  thou  art,  thou  art  enough  to  hide, 
Like  all  created,  secrets  from  me, 
And  stand  a  barrier  to  eternity. 
And  I,  how  can  I  praise  thee  well  and  wide 

"  From  where  I  dwell — upon  the  hither  side 
Thou  little  veil  for  so  great  mystery, 
When  shall  I  penetrate  all  things  and  thec, 
And  then  look  back  ?     For  this  I  must  abide, 


144  SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS. 

"  Till  thou  shalt  grow  and  fold  and  be  unfurled 
Literally  between  me  and  the  world, 

Then  I  shall  drink  from  in  beneath  a  spring 

"  And  from  a  poet's  side  shall  read  his  book 
Oh,  daisy  mine,  what  will  it  be  to  look 

From  God's  side  even  of  such  a  simple  thing." 

This  sonnet  will  recall  Tennyson's  treatment  of  the  same 
thought  in  "  O  Flower  in  Crannied  Wall." 

It  is  singular  that  the  other  poem,  "  San  Lorenzo  Guis- 
tiniani's  Mother,"  has  not  become  better  known  than  it  is. 
It  deserves  a  place  in  every  collection  of  good  poetry.  It 
is  the  story,  told  in  a  few  words,  of  a  mother  whose  son 
has  become  a  Franciscan  friar.  One  day  a  brother  of  his 
order  visits  her  for  alms.  Years  have  passed  since  she 
saw  her  son,  she  thinks  this  visitor  is  he ;  but  she  is  not 
sure.  She  says : 

"  Mine  eyes  were  veiled  by  mists  of  tears 
When  on  a  day  in  many  years 

One  of  his  order  came.     I  thrilled. 
Facing,  I  thought  that  face  fulfilled, 
I  doubted  for  my  mists  of  tears. 

"  1 1  is  blessing  be  with  me  forever  ! 

My  hope  and  doubt  were  hard  to  sever,- 
That  altered  face,  those  holy  weeds, 
I  filled  his  wallet  and  kissed  his  beads, 
And  lost  his  echoing  feet  forever. 

"  If  to  my  son  my  alms  were  given 
I  know  not  and  I  wait  for  Heaven. 

He  did  not  plead  for  child  of  mine, 

But  for  another  Child  Divine, 
And  unto  Him  it  was  surely  given. 

"  There  is  One  alone  who  cannot  change  ; 
Dreams  arc  we,  shadows,  visions  strange  ; 


SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS.  145 

And  all  1  give  is  given  to  One, 
I  might  mistake  my  dearest  son, 
But  never  the  Son  who  cannot  change." 

It  is  something  to  have  written  the  thought  which  is  the 
germ  of  this  beautiful  poem.  The  mother  whose  heart 
yearns  for  the  son  she  has  given  to  God, — whose  heart 
leaps  at  a  look  in  the  friar's  face  so  like  the  look  she  loved 
from  the  time  he  was  a  baby  in  her  arms, — consoles  her- 
self with  the  consolation  of  Faith — she  might  mistake  her 
son,  but  never  our  Lord  to  whom  both  he  and  she  had 
surrendered  their  wills. 

Adelaide  Procter  is  more  direct  than  Mrs.  Meynell. 
There  is  the  difference  between  Miss  Procter's  verse  and 
Mrs.  Meynell  which  exists  between  Longfellow  and  the 
more  misty  verses  of  younger  poets.  From  the  purely 
literary  standpoint,  Miss  Procter  would  be  called  less  of 
a  poet  than  Mrs.  Meynell,  as  Longfellow  would  be  in 
comparison  with  Shelley.  But,  to  find  the  true  poet,  one 
must  not  consider  his  verse  entirely  from  the  literary  point 
of  view. 

LADY  GEORGIANA  FULLERTON. 

" Femmes-Auteurs,"  as  Louis  Veuillot  called  "author- 
esses," have  done  a  great  deal  of  harm  in  the  world.  The 
sentimentalism  of  George  Sand,  the  affected  cynicism  of 
"  Ouida,"  the  sensuousness  of  Rhoda  Broughton,  and  the 
utter  shamelessness  of  some  others  savor  more  of  Mistress 
Aphra  Behn  than  of  the  reticence  and  self-respect  of  that 
great  English  novelist,  Miss  Austen.  Happily,  our  cen- 
10 


I46  SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS. 

tury  and  the  vocation  of  women  of  letters  have  been  re- 
deemed by  names  which  are  not  inferior  to  the  ones  that 
slowly  arose  above  the  flash  and  clangor  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott's  wonderful  mediaeval  world. 

Among  the  brightest  of  these  names  we  do  not  hesitate 
to  put  that  of  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton.  A  certain  deli- 
cate quality  of  humor  has  caused  Miss  Austen  to  be  named 
second  to  Shakspeare  by  English  critics.  This  praise 
might  be  considered  overstrained  if  we  did  not  remark  that 
Shakspeare's  humor  is  much  less  than  his  wit.  In  all  the 
qualities  that  made  Jane  Austen  mistress  of  her  craft — 
her  consummate  art,  her  careful  reticence,  her  subtle 
knowledge  of  the  varying  temperature  of  the  social  atmo- 
sphere which  her  characters  breathed — Lady  Georgiana 
Fullerton  was  Miss  Austen's  equal,  and  more  than  her 
equal  in  strength  and  intensity  of  feeling. 

Miss  Austen  is  likely  to  remind  the  average  reader  more 
of  Cowper  than  of  Shakspeare.  Her  books  seem  redolent 
of  the  aroma  of  tea  mixed  in  just  the  right  proportion. 
They  are  comfortable — steeped  in  comfort.  If  there  is 
no  word  in  them  that  can  bring  a  blush  to  the  cheek  of 
a  young  girl,  there  is  likewise  no  word  in  them  to  "  catch 
us  by  the  throat "  and  to  force  us  to  acknowledge  there 
are  better  things  in  the  world  than  a  comfortable  income, 
a  bright  grate,  and  pleasant  acquaintances.  Nevertheless 
she  was  an  artist  of  the  highest  type.  Mr.  T.  E.  Kebbel, 
in  the  Fortnightly  Review,  expresses  that  sense  of  the 
limitations  of  her  art  which  is  one  of  the  necessary  re- 
quirements of  true  art :  "  To  have  steered  exactly  between 


SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS.  147 

the  two  extremes  of  undue  severity  and  undue  license ;  to 
have  caused  us  an  uninterrupted  amusement  without  ever 
descending  to  the  grotesque ;  to  have  been  comic  without 
being  vulgar,  and  to  have  avoided  extremes  of  every  kind 
without  ever  being  dull  or  commonplace,  is  the  praise  of 
which  Jane  Austen  is  almost  entitled  to  a  monopoly,  .  .  . 
and  only  add  another  to  the  many  proofs  which  we  possess 
that  nothing  is  too  mean  for  genius  to  convert  into  gold." 

In  writing  of  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton  I  can  add  the 
higher  praise  that  she,  without  violating  the  principles  of 
art,  led  us  through  this  world  to  the  gate  of  one  to  which 
this  is  a  phantom  of  unreality.  Miss  Austen  would  have 
regarded  Emma,  or  any  other  of  her  heroines  who  might 
have  sold  their  goods  and  given  the  proceeds  to  the  poor, 
as  monstrous  changelings  with  whom  she  could  not  possi- 
bly have  any  acquaintance  or  sympathy.  She  is  always 
decorous;  the  appearance  of  a  Constance  Sherwood  or 
her  friend,  Mistress  Ward,  with  aspirations  beyond  the 
visible  world,  in  the  little  circle  of  her  characters  would 
have  filled  her  with  uneasy  amazement. 

Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton  knew  Miss  Austen's  world  of 
English  gentlemen  and  gentlewomen.  She,  too,  could 
bring  around  the  atmosphere  of  toast  and  tea,  of  drawn 
curtains  and  glowing  grates,  of  the  comfortable  interiors 
so  dear  to  Miss  Austen's  greatest  living  successor,  Mrs. 
Oliphant;  but  she  had  powers,  and  exerted  them,  which 
take  her  nearer  to  Thackeray — the  Thackeray  of  "Es- 
mond " — than  any  critic  has  so  far  been  willing  to  admit. 
And  "  The  Handkerchief  at  the  Window "  is  one  of 


148  SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS. 

the  most  perfectly  concentrated  short  stories  ever 
written. 

The  purely  literary  works  of  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton 
can  be  safely  quoted  against  that  class  of  dilettanti  who 
assert  that  the  Christian  religion,  when  it  permeates  and 
directs  literary  work,  enfeebles  its  artistic  qualities.  One 
of  the  latest  of  English  "  femmes-auteurs,"  Miss  Vernon 
Lee,  a  positivist  by  profession,  has  written  a  novel  to  show 
to  what  depths  devotion  to  art  for  art's  sake  and  to  material 
beauty  for  the  sake  of  material  beauty,  leads.  She  shows, 
with  the  air  of  a  prophet,  that  the  false  sestheticism  of 
Dante,  Rossetti,  Pater,  and  the  rest,  leads  to  a  degradation 
so  great  as  to  be  beyond  the  reach  of  human  speech.  Her 
heroine,  Miss  Brown,  seeks  refuge  in  the  barren  abstrac- 
tions in  which  George  Eliot  found  only  despondency. 
These  Miss  Vernon  Lee  calls  religion;  she  offers  a  de- 
graded world  Comte  for  our  Lord,  an  impossible  altruism 
for  charity.  She  speaks  for  positivism.  It  is  evident  that 
the  axiom  that  art  is  defective  when  it  is  not  united  to 
something  higher  has  ceased  to  be  received  by  the  "  cul- 
tured "  as  infallible.  But  with  the  school  of  sesthetes,  now 
growing  small  and  unpopular,  it  is  still  held  that  the  Chris- 
tian must  hamper  the  artist  in  his  higher  efforts,  as  it  is 
held  by  certain  classes  in  France  that  a  devotion  to  free- 
dom is  always  united  to  a  denial  of  God. 

Villon,  the  poet  of  these  aesthetes,  asked,  "  Ou  sont  les 
neiges  d'autan  ?  "  The  snows  of  last  year  are  forgotten, 
as  the  pretentious  "art,"  the  mock  paganism,  and  the 
equally  mock  "blessed  damozels"  and  Christian  virgins 


SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS.  149 

of  this  school  without  faith,  will  soon  be  forgotten. 
The  artistic  quality  of  the  novels  of  Lady  Georgiana 
Fullerton  deepened  with  her  faith,  and  her  faith  ran  deeper 
as  she  neared  her  end.  Many  of  us  can  long  for  the  in- 
tense devotion  which  impelled  her  to  say :  "  How  few 
Holy  Weeks  are  left  me!  Even  if  I  live  to  be  very  old 
I  cannot  have  more  than  twenty;"  but  how  few  really 
have  that  utter  union  with  the  visible  life  of  the  Church  it 
expresses ! 

Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton  was  essentially  religious; 
in  1844,  prior  to  her  conversion  to  the  Church,  she  wrote 
"  Ellen  Middleton,"  of  which  a  new  edition  has  recently 
appeared  in  London.  "  Ellen  Middleton "  shows  the 
struggles  of  a  devout  soul.  It  has  somewhat  too  much  of 
the  sentiment  and  sentimentalism  of  the  outpourings  of  a 
heart  that  had  kept  its  treasures  of  imagination  and  thought 
close  until  the  pen  unlocked  them.  The  story  is  serious 
but  interesting.  Its  style  is  vigorous,  but  without  that 
perfect  equality  of  handling  and  clearness  of  tone  which 
make  "  Constance  Sherwood  "  and  "A  Will  and  a  Way  " 
models  of  good  English.  At  this  time  Lady  Georgiana 
did  not  disdain  what  later  she  might  have  considered 
"sensationalism;"  but  both  the  sentimentalism  and  the 
sensationalism  disappear  as  she  gets  nearer  and  nearer  to 
the  heart  of  the  Church.  Her  art  grows  stronger  and 
purer  as  her  faith  and  charity  increase.  When  she  wrote 
"  Ellen  Middleton  "  she  believed  in  that  chimera,  Tracta- 
rianism.  A  future  Anglican  Church  seemed  possible  to 
her.  There  are  in  the  book  lines  which  tell  of  her  cling- 


150  SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS. 

ing  to  the  fallacy  of  the  validity  of  Anglican  Orders.  In 
the  last  edition,  printed  early  in  the  present  year,  these 
lines  have  been  permitted  to  remain,  very  wisely,  as  with- 
out them  the  novel  would  not  be  so  perfect  an  index  of 
the  mind  that  created  it. 

After  her  conversion — she  was  received  into  the  Church 
in  1846,  four  years  after  the  conversion  of  her  husband — 
she  gave  "  Grantley  Manor  "  to  the  world.  It  is  a  novel 
of  character,  an  advance  on  "  Ellen  Middleton."  "  The 
Old  Highlander"  came  next.  In  1852  her  success  had 
been  so  great  that  she  published  "  Lady  Bird."  Of  the 
trio  of  earlier  novels  this  is  by  far  the  most  powerful.  It 
is  intensely  human  and  intensely  real.  Reading  it,  one 
cannot  help  being  impressed  by  the  strength  of  purpose, 
the  great  desire  for  truth,  which  the  soul  of  the  author 
must  have  possessed ;  for  it  is  very  plain  that  "  Lady  Bird," 
"Grantley  Manor,"  and  "Ellen  Middleton"  are  partly 
autobiographical,  not  as  to  the  incidents,  but  as  to  the 
feelings  of  which  the  incidents  are  expressions.  It  is  not 
strange  that  these  novels,  better  known  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic  than  her  other  works,  are  beloved  of  young  people. 
The  author  was  not  young  when  she  published  them,  but 
they  are  books  that  only  one  young  and  ardent  in  heart 
and  mind  could  have  written.  Unchastened  by  Christianity, 
such  a  heart  and  mind  might  have  run  into  extravagances 
of  which  we  find  indications  in  "  Ellen  Middleton,"  and  still 
fainter  in  "  Lady  Bird." 

"Too  Strange  Not  to  be  True"  and  "Mrs.  Gerald's 
Niece"  are  also  very  well  known  here.  The  latter  is  a  book 


SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS.  151 

of  religious  controversy,  edifying  and  in  good  taste,  with 
the  thread  of  a  story  to  keep  it  together.  The  former  is  a 
novel  of  romantic  and  absorbing  interest  in  which  the  au- 
thor made  one  of  those  few  errors  which  reviewers  love  to 
discover  in  order  to  give  liveliness  to  their  criticisms.  It 
was  in  this  book  she  described,  if  we  do  not  mistake,  the 
gambols  of  monkeys  on  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi.  Later, 
in  her  translation  of  Mrs.  Craven's  "  Elaine,"  the  sapient 
reviewers  found  canapt  (sofa),  translated  "  canopy,"  and 
they  exploited  the  mistake  with  double  eagerness  because 
Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton  was  so  careful  and  so  rarely 
fell  into  those  slight  errors  which  pepper  the  pages  of 
writers  of  fiction.  In  one  of  her  short  stories,  "Ad  Majorem 
Dei  Gloriam,"  she  tries  to  teach  the  awfulness  of  a  writer's 
responsibility.  She  felt  it  deeply.  As  she  grew  older  the 
dreadful  weight  of  her  vocation  would  have  made  her  over- 
scrupulous had  it  not  been  made  so  evident  to  her  that 
one  of  her  duties  to  God  was  to  write.  She  turned  her 
attention  to  more  serious  work,  as  she  doubtless  thought 
it,  than  the  writing  of  novels.  She  trembled  for  the  value 
of  the  little  seeds  she  scattered  abroad  on  their  tiny  wings 
from  her  full  hands.  Alas!  if  there  should  be  one  weed 
planted  even  unconsciously  by  her  hand !  She  trembled 
at  the  thought ;  and  throughout  the  whole  twenty  volumes 
of  her  works  one  may  see  between  the  lines  an  undercur- 
rent of  watchfulness  that  cleansed  every  word  as  pebbles 
are  whitened  in  a  clear  stream.  We  have  always  regretted 
that  "  Too  Strange  Not  to  be  True  "  is  disfigured  by  wood- 
cuts incongruous  to  the  text — singular  monstrosities  which, 


152  SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS. 

when  a  new  and  uniform  edition  of  her  novels  is  issued  by 
some  other  publisher  in  America,  we  hope  to  see  removed. 
Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton  was  of  the  famous  Leveson 
Gower  family.  Her  father  was  in  1833  created  Lord 
Granville.  The  present  Lord  Granville  is  her  brother. 
She  was  born  on  September  23d,  1812.  The  fact  that  she 
wrote  French  as  fluently  and  elegantly  as  she  wrote  Eng- 
lish, and  that  she  knew  France  as  thoroughly  as  she  knew 
England,  and  that  one  country  was  almost  as  dear  to  her 
as  the  other,  is  accounted  for  by  her  long  residence  in 
France  in  the  household  of  her  father,  who  was  ambassador 
in  Paris.  Her  life  was  very  happy  there.  Her  brother, 
the  present  Lord  Granville,  oppressed  with  cares  of  state, 
differing  from  her  in  religion,  and  often  separated  from 
her  by  his  duties,  has  never  lost  that  love  and  reverence 
for  her  which  sprang  up  in  the  kindly,  domestic  warmth 
of  the  exiled  yet  happy  family.  It  was  one  of  the  fortu- 
nate attributes  of  this  lady,  as  eminent  for  her  womanly 
virtues  as  for  her  womanly  genius,  that  she  was  tenacious 
in  her  love.  No  relative  ever  had  reason  to  complain  of 
her  coldness,  no  friend  of  a  change  in  her.  To  be  loved 
by  her  once  was  to  be  loved  by  her,  in  spite  of  all  short- 
comings, forever.  Her  charity — in  the  truest  sense  of  the 
word — was  what  St.  Paul  describes  charity  to  be: 
"  Charity  is  patient,  is  kind ;  charity  envieth  not ;  dealeth 
not  perversely ;  is  not  puffed  up ;  is  not  ambitious ;  seeketh 
not  her  own;  is  not  provoked  to  anger;  thinketh  no  evil; 
rejoiceth  not  in  iniquity,  but  rejoiceth  with  the  truth: 
beareth  all  things,  believeth  all  things,  hopeth  all  things, 


SOME    WOMEX    WRITERS.  153 

endureth  all  things."  This  expresses  her  charity.  The 
love  and  friendship,  the  trust  and  belief  she  once  gave  she 
never  took  back. 

In  1833  she  married  Alexander  George  Fullerton,  whose 
family  seats  were  in  Ireland  and  England.  Although  her 
love  for  Ireland  is  manifest  in  many  of  her  books,  and  her 
kindness  to  the  Irish  poor  of  London  was  unvarying  and 
thoughtful,  she  never  entered  Ireland.  But  she  knew 
Ireland  and  the  Irish  through  the  happy  intuition  of  sym- 
pathy. She  looked  on  them  as  a  race  of  martyrs, — as  a 
race  ennobled  by  the  sword  of  persecution, — whom  she, 
the  daughter  of  a  peer  and  the  niece  of  a  duke,  was 
honored  in  serving.  Had  they  not  suffered  for  Christ's 
sake  ?  In  her  "  Verses  "  she  cries : 

"  Yes,  you  can  die  as  martyrs  die, 

Sons  of  the  saints  of  yore 
Who  fell  when  Erin's  fields  were  stained 
With  her  own  children's  gore." 

She  loved  the  poor.  She  begged  for  them,  she  worked 
for  them,  she  economized  for  them.  She  deprived  herself 
of  luxuries  constantly  for  their  sake.  A  friend  tells  how 
she  walked  long  distances  rather  than  hire  a  cab,  that  she 
might  add  to  her  insatiable  purse  for  the  poor.  She  was 
not  unmindful  of  the  duties  of  her  state  in  life.  She 
played  her  part  as  hostess  in  her  husband's  house  with 
grace  and  elegance.  She  wrote  for  the  poor,  not  for  the 
public.  The  money  paid  her  by  the  publishers  found  its 
way  to  the  poor.  Literally,  she  was  a  slave  for  Christ's 
sake ;  and,  in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  a  fool  for  Christ's 
sake. 


154  SOME    H'OME.Y    ir/UTERS. 

She  founded  the  "  Poor  Servants  of  God  Incarnate." 
that  the  wretched  might  be  helped.  She  gave  all  her 
energy  and  peculiar  earnestness  to  the  getting  of  the  Sisters 
of  St.  Vincent  de  Paul  into  England,  and  she  succeeded. 

In  1842  Mr.  Fullerton  became  a  Catholic.  The  conflict 
that  tore  the  heart  of  his  wife  is  described  in  the  often- 
quoted  lines  of  hers,  "  Mother  Church :  " 

"  Oh  !  that  thy  creed  was  sound,  I  cried, 

Until  I  felt  its  power, 
And  almost  prayed  to  find  it  false 

In  the  decisive  hour. 
Great  was  the  struggle,  fierce  the  strife, 

But  wonderful  the  gain, 
For  not  one  trial  or  one  pang 

Was  sent  or  felt  in  vain. 
And  every  link  of  that  long  chain 

That  led  my  soul  to  thee 
Remains  a  monument  of  all 

Thy  mercy  sent  to  me." 

The  heaviest  sorrow  of  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton's  life 
was  the  death  of  her  son  by  a  sudden  accident.  She  was 
not  with  him  when  he  died.  If  she  could  have  seen  him 
before  his  young  life  took  flight  the  blow  would  perhaps 
have  not  left  that  constantly  re  opening  wound  which 
gave  her  anguish  until  the  day  of  her  death.  Her  dearest 
friends  dropped  from  her  one  by  one,  each  loss  seeming 
to  tear  away  a  portion  of  her  heart.  Her  sister,  Lady 
Rivers,  the  Marchioness  of  Lothian,  and  Lady  London- 
derry were  taken  by  death.  Each  vacancy  in  her  heart 
seemed  to  be  at  once  filled  with  new  love  for  her  Lord. 

She  knew  to  its  utmost  the  sweetness  of  Christian  friend- 
ship. In  "  Constance  Sherwood,"  the  greatest  of  her  works 


SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS.  155 

of  fiction,  she  gives  us  a  charming  picture  of  that  between 
her  heroine  and  Mistress  Ann  Dacre,  afterwards  Lady 
Surrey.  The  account  of  the  first  meeting  of  these  young 
girls  is  a  delightful  bit  of  description.  We  see  the  rustic 
but  gentle  Constance,  a  little  shy  from  having  seen  few 
people,  forgetting  to  put  down  the  posies  of  old-fashioned 
flowers  she  had  gathered  for  the  rooms.  The  dahlias,  the 
marigolds,  the  late  daisies,  and  the  honeysuckle  of  her 
garden  filled  her  arms  as  the  courtly  party  her  parents 
expected  rode  up  to  their  house.  Constance  was  the  child 
of  "  recusants,"  who  clung  to  the  faith  of  their  fathers  in 
spite  of  the  ostracism  of  their  neighbors.  Her  heart  had 
ached  when  she  saw  the  village  children  joyously  dancing 
around  the  May-pole ;  but  her  father,  finding  her  in  tears, 
led  her  into  the  woods  where  carpets  of  wild  flowers  had 
been  laid,  and  turned  her  tears  to  smiles  by  his  pleasant 
tales.  At  Easter,  when  the  village  children  rolled  pasch 
eggs  down  the  smooth  sjdes  of  the  green  hills,  her  mother 
would  paint  her  some  herself  and  adorn  them  with  such 
bright  colors  and  rare  sentences  that  she  "  feared  to  break 
them  with  rude  handling,"  and  kept  them  by  her  throughout 
the  year,  rather  as  pictures  to  be  gazed  on  than  toys  to 
be  played  with  in  a  wanton  fashion.  Children  would  cry 
out  sometimes,  but  half  in  play,  "  Down  with  the  papists!  " 
although  the  papists  were  not  looked  on  unkindly  by  the 
commoner  sort  of  _folk,  to  whom  their  charity  endeared 
them.  On  the  eve  of  Martinmas  day  Lady  Monteagle 
came  to  the  Sherwood  house  with  her  son  and  her  three 
granddaughters.  "  Her  son,11  writes  Constance,  to  whose 


156  SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS. 

personality  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton  has  given  the  diffi- 
cult quality  of  reality,  "  had  somewhat  of  the  same  nobility 
of  mien,  and  was  tall  and  graceful  in  his  movements ;  but 
behind  her,  on  her  pillion,  sat  a  small  counterpart  of  her^ 
self,  inasmuch  as  childhood  can  resemble  old  age,  and 
youthful  loveliness  matronly  dignity.  This  was  the  eldest 
of  her  ladyship's  granddaughters,  my  sweet  Mistress  Ann 
Dacre.  This  was  my  first  sight  of  her  who  was  hereafter 
to  hold  so  great  a  place  in  my  heart  and  in  my  life.  As 
she  was  lifted  from  the  saddle,  and  stood  in  her  riding- 
habit  and  plumed  hat  at  our  door,  making  a  graceful  and 
modest  obeisance  to  my  parents,  one  step  retired  behind 
her  grandma,  with  a  lovely  color  tinging  her  cheeks  and 
her  long  lashes  veiling  her  sweet  eyes,  I  thought  I  had 
never  seen  so  fair  a  creature  as  this  high-born  maiden  of 
my  own  age:  and  even  now  that  time,  as  it  has  gone  by, 
has  shown  me  all  that  a  court  can  display  to  charm  the 
eyes  and  enrapture  the  fancy,  I  do  not  gainsay  that  same 
childish  thought  of  mine.  And  then  Lady  Monteagle 
commanded  Mistress  Ann  to  salute ;  and  I  felt  my  cheeks 
flush  and  my  heart  beat  with  joy  as  the  sweet  little  lady- 
put  her  arms  round  my  neck  and  pressed  her  lips  on  inv 
cheek." 

The  progress  of  this  friendship  is  the  story  of  the  book. 
Mistress  Ann  Dacre  becomes  Lady  Surrey.  She  is  at 
heart  a  Catholic  and  would  willingly  practise  her  religion, 
although  all  around  her  have  "  conformed."  Her  husband 
is  lured  from  her  by  that  expert  coquette,  Queen  Eliza- 
beth. Through  all  her  trials  and  her  weakness  the  friend- 


SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS.  157 

ship  between  Constance  and  her  remains  unchanged. 
Constance  never  upbraids  her  "  sweet  friend."  Her  friend- 
ship is  savored  with  divine  charity  and  patience.  The 
strength  of  this  exquisite  novel  lies  in  the  purity  and  truth 
of  its  author's  own  idea  of  friendship.  Through  all  her 
life  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton  knew  what  it  meant ;  he 
who  would  read  how  deeply  one  woman  may  love  another 
in  Christ  should  ponder  the  story  of  Constance  Sherwood. 
One  chapter  of  it,  like  a  cool,  clear  day,  fresh  and  re- 
freshing, is  worth  all  the  raptures  and  the  false,  self-con- 
scious, overstrained  analysis  of  affected  sentiments  in 
'  which  \he.femmes-antei/rs  delight  to  indulge. 

Love-making  is  a  very  important  matter  in  modem 
novels,  and  in  some  modern  novels  much  read  it  is  a  long 
drawn-out  and  nauseating  matter.  There  are  few  novelists 
who  know  how  to  have  their  heroes  and  heroines  make 
love  with  sufficient  delicacy.  Of  fewer  novelists  can  it  be 
said  that  one  would  ask  them  for  more  love-making.  In 
reading  Thackerary  we  laugh  at  or  pity  the  lovers ;  Trol- 
lope's  love-scenes  are  exceedingly  matter-of-fact;  Mrs. 
Oliphant's  love-making  is  what  may  be  called  "  nice,"  and 
William  Black  is  too  much  engaged  with  the  changes  of 
his  scenes,  his  moonlight  and  sunrise  effects,  to  give  the 
necessary  attention  to  the  billing  and  cooing  of  his  char- 
acters. Miss  Austen's  people  make  love  like  human  be- 
ings to  whom  "  money  settlements "  are  more  important 
than  hearts.  In  most  novelists'  work  we  miss  the  quality 
of  reticence  in  love-making.  Their  lovers  have  either  no 
reserve  or  no  feeling.  It  is  a  fine  thing  to  think  of  a  man's 


158  SOME    WOMRX    WRITERS. 

heart  as  of  a  good  violin.  It  is  full  of  rich  music;  its 
strings  are  drawn  to  their  utmost  tension.  The  master- 
hand  touches  it  with  his  bow;  it  does  not  give  forth  all 
its  rich  harmonies  at  once.  There  is  a  prelude  which 
suggests  the  wealth  of  noble  music  stored  in  the  tense 
chords.  Finally  it  comes  forth  in  a  grand,  increasing 
harmony  of  melodious  sounds.  But  the  strings  do  not 
loosen;  they  are  held  tight;  there  is  no  abandonment; 
when  they  relax  and  forget  that  music  comes  only  by 
sacrifice,  there  are  no  more  noble  sounds.  A  man's  heart, 
like  a  violin,  must  not  relax  its  strings  in  that  abandon- 
ment which  the  femmes-auteurs  like  to  depict.  Passion 
is  discord :  love  is  a  different  thing. 

Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton's  love-scenes  are  very  tender 
and  delicate,  full  of  reserve,  yet  showing  bursts  of  the 
tenderest  feeling.  She  makes  us  feel  the  qualities  of  her 
heroes  without  throwing  a  glare  of  light  upon  them ;  all 
the  high  lights  in  her  pictures  are  in  her  heroines.  Basil 
Rockwood  is  sketched  by  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton 
rather  than  fully  painted ;  but  the  reader  gets  a  lofty  idea 
of  his  consummate  manliness.  The  author  is  true  to  the 
character  of  the  sweet,  strong,  maidenly  Constance  in 
having  her  artlessly,  yet  with  reserve,  describe  her  love 
for  Basil.  She  met  him  in  a  great  crowd  of  people  at 
"  Mistress  Wells1.''  They  talk  of  the  sincere  and  clever 
widower.  Mr.  Roper,  the  husband  of  Sir  Thomas  More's 
Margaret. 

"  I  felt  in  my  soul  an  unusual  liking  for  his  conversa- 
tion, and  the  more  so  when,  leaving  off  jesting,  he  said: 


SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS,  159 

'  The  last  fault  Mr.  Roper  did  charge  you  with  was  lack 
of  prudence  wherein  prudence  is  most  needed  in  these 
days.' 

"  'Alas! '  I  exclaimed,  'for  that  also  do  I  cry  mercy; 
but  indeed,  Master  Rockwood,  there  is  in  these  days  so 
much  cowardice  and  timeserving  which  doth  style  itself 
prudence  that  methinks  it  might  sometimes  happen  that  a 
right  boldness  should  be  called  rashness.'  .  .  .  Then  some 
persons  moving  nearer  to  where  we  were  sitting,  some 
general  conversation  ensued,  in  which  several  took  part ; 
and  none  so  much  to  my  liking  as  Basil,  albeit  others 
might  possess  more  ready  tongues  and  a  more  sparkling 
wit.  In  all  the  years  since  I  had  left  my  home  I  had  not 
found  so  much  contentment  in  any  one's  society.  His 
mind  and  mine  were  like  two  instruments  with  various 
chords  but  one  keynote,  which  maintained  them  in  ad- 
mirable harmony.  The  measure  of  our  agreement  stood 
rather  in  the  drift  of  our  desires  and  the  scope  of  our  ap- 
proval than  in  any  parity  of  tastes,  of  resemblance  of  dis- 
position. Acquaintanceship  soon  gave  way  to  intimacy, 
which  bred  a  mutual  friendship  that  in  its  turn  was  not 
slow  to  change  into  a  warmer  feeling.  We  met  very 
often.  It  seemed  so  natural  to  him  to  affection  me,  and 
me  to  reciprocate  his  affection,  that  if  our  love  began  not 
— which  methinks  it  did — on  that  first  day  of  meeting,  I 
know  not  when  it  had  birth." 

Shakspeare,   in  "As  You  Like  It,"  says : 

"  But,  mistress,  know  yourself  :  down  on  your  knees, 
And  thank  heaven,  fasting,  for  a  good  man's  love/' 


*6o  SOME    ]VOMF..\'    WRITERS. 

"  For  I  pray  you,"  writes  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton,  in 
the  person  of  Constance  Sherwood,  after  Basil  Rockwood 
has  proposed,  "  after  the  gift  of  faith  and  of  grace  for  to 
know  and  love  God,  is  there  aught  on  earth  to  be  jewelled 
by  a  woman  like  to  the  affection  of  a  good  man ;  or  a 
more  secure  haven  for  her  to  anchor  in  amid  the  billows 
of  present  life,  except  that  of  religion,  to  which  all  be  not 
called,  than  an  honorable  contract  of  marriage,  wherein 
reason,  passion,  and  duty  do  bind  the  soul  in  a  triple  cord 
of  love  ? " 

Later  Constance  says  to  Basil: 

"  '  But  truly,  sir,  if  your  thinking  is  just  that  easy  virtue 
is  little  or  no  virtue,  I  shall  be  the  least  virtuous  wife  in 
the  world.  Why,  Basil,  what,  I  pray  you,  should  be  the 
duty  of  a  virtuous  wife  but  to  love  her  husband  ? ' 

Lady  Surrey,  who  loves  her  husband  in  spite  of  his  imi- 
tation of  the  Earl  of  Leicester  in  dangling  after  Anne 
Boleyn's  daughter,  makes  Constance  indignant  when  she 
asks  whether  Constance  would  change  if  Basil  changed. 

" '  If  he  did  much  alter,'  I  answered,  '  as  no  longer  to 
care  for  me,  methinks  I  should  at  once  cast  him  out  of 
my  heart;  for  then  it  would  not  have  been  Basil,  but  a 
fancied  being  coined  by  mine  own  imaginings,  should  I 
have  doted  on.' " 

"  '  Tut ! '  she  cried,  '  thou  art  too  proud.  If  thou  dost 
speak  truly,  I  misdoubt  that  to  be  love  which  could  so 
easily  discard  its  object.' 

" '  For  my  part,'  I  replied,  somewhat  nettled,  '  I  think 
the  highest  sort  of  passion  should  be  above  suspecting 


SOME    ll'OME.V    WRITERS.  161 

change  in  him  which  doth  inspire  it,  or  resenting  a  change 
which  should  procure  it  freedom  from  an  unworthy  thrall.' 

" '  I  ween,'  she  answered,  'we  do  somewhat  misconceive 
each  one  the  other's  meaning;  and,  moreover,  no  par 
allel  can  exist  between  a  wife's  affection  and  a  maidens 
liking:  " 

In  all  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton's  novels  we  find  love 
depicted  as  it  should  be,  with  tenderness,  with  keen  insight 
into  human  hearts,  with  Christian  reserve.  Her  char- 
acters are  not  mere  creatures  of  impulse  tossed  powerless, 
seemingly  without  will  or  self-respect,  on  a  rude  sea  bear- 
ing them  to  chaos.  Even  in  love  they  preserve  their  faith 
and  reason.  The  marriages  in  her  novels — and  there  are 
many  marriages — are  marriages  of  reason  as  well  as  affec- 
tion. In  the  novel  with  a  purpose  the  reader  is  usually 
in  the  mental  condition  of  the  child  forced  to  take  medi- 
cine disguised  in  syrup.  He  will  drink  the  syrup,  if  he 
can,  and  leave  the  bitter  stuff;  or,  if  they  have  been  well 
mixed,  he  will  make  a  wry  face  and  be  thankful  that  the 
docoction  is  no  worse.  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton's  books 
all  have  a  purpose ;  but  her  careful  art  and  her  intense 
earnestness  save  us  from  the  fear  that  the  "purpose"  will 
pop  out  suddenly  and  deprive  us  of  interest  in  our  story. 
It  is  of  few  moral  writers  that  this  can  be  said.  We  read 
Miss  Austen  for  amusement,  for  the  enjoyment  of  spend- 
ing an  hour  in  a  past  social  atmosphere  which  she  recon- 
structs for  us,  but  not  for  instruction  or  elevation. 

In  "A  Will  and  a  Way "  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton 
similarly  reconstructs  for  us  social  France  as  it  was  im- 
1 1 


162  SOME    WOME.V    WRITERS. 

mediately  before  and  during  the  Revolution.  Nothing 
could  be  better  done  than  the  graphic  pictures  of  the  old 
Voltairean  chatelaine  in  her  castle,  untouched  as  yet  by 
the  storm.  It  is  a  unique  tableau,  teaching  us  even  more 
than  De  Tocqueville  of  the  means  by  which  the  ancient 
regime  undermined  their  own  foundations.  "A  Will  and 
a  Way,"  like  "  Constance  Sherwood,"  has  never  yet  re- 
ceived the  critical  consideration  it  deserves.  "  Constance 
Sherwood  "  is  the  more  perfect  work  of  art.  In  the  quality 
of  vraisemb lance,  in  that  of  reproducing  the  manner  of 
speech  of  a  past  time,  in  the  masterly  reserve  of  power 
which  is  the  highest  attribute  of  good  art,  "  Constance 
Sherwood  "  approaches  nearer  to  Thackeray's  incompar- 
able "  Esmond  "  than  to  any  other  novel  of  our  time. 

"  A  Will  and  a  Way "  has  the  moving  elements  of  a 
great  historical  tragedy.  It  gives  us  truer  glimpses  of  that 
time  of  tragedies  than  we  get  anywhere  outside  the  more 
honest  parts  of  Carlyle.  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton  fills 
each  inch  of  her  great  canvas  so  carefully,  giving  no  hasty 
blotches  of  crimson  merely  for  effect,  that  she  interprets 
even  the  philosophy  of  the  Revolution  by  means  of  her 
social  sketches  better  than  many  pretentious  writers.  The 
reader  who  has  not  the  time  to  collate  the  memoirs  of  the 
period  may  yield  himself  to  the  guidance  of  Lady  Geor- 
giana Fullerton  for  a  knowledge  of  France  in  the  throes 
of  the  Terror.  She  does  not  exaggerate  even  the  smallest 
incident  for  her  purpose.  Each  touch,  as  we  said  before, 
has  the  true  color  of  truth.  There  is  enough  matter  in 
this  book  to  fill  a  dozen  novels  and  make  them  absorb- 


SOME    WOMEN    WRITERS.  163 

ingly  interesting,  and  enough  suggestion  for  many  months 
of  high  thinking. 

The  test  of  the  value  of  a  novel  is  the  impression  it 
leaves.  Having  read  "  Fabiola  "  or  "  Ben-Hur,"  we  arise 
with  the  triumphant  exclamation,  "  I,  too,  am  a  Christian." 
This  is  the  cry  which  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton  would 
move  us  to  utter.  This  is  her  purpose.  She  lived  for  the 
greater  glory  of  God.  Her  works  interpreted  her  life. 
Each  was  the  reflex  of  the  other.  The  good  she  has  done 
lives  after  her.  While  there  are  young  hearts  ready  to 
glow  with  the  records  of  Christian  heroism  of  healthy 
romance,  and  old  ones  capable  of  loving  aspirations 
toward  great  deeds  and  daily  sacrifices,  Lady  Georgiana 
Fullerton's  novels  will  never  lack  admirers. 

Let  us  hope  that  the  everlasting  flood  of  literary  trash 
will  soon  become  so  tiresome  to  the  indefatigable  readers 
of  fiction  that  a  purer  taste  may  arise,  and  the  novels  of 
this  Christian  artist  in  letters  be  given  their  rightful  place. 
As  it  is,  the  young  woman  who  from  her  course  of  reading 
has  omitted  "  Constance  Sherwood  "  and  "A  Will  and  a 
Way  "  should  at  once  repair  a  serious  defect  in  her  literary 
education. 


LECTURE  VIII. 

LITERATURE  AND  MANNERS. 

IF  I  seem  to  insist  too  much  on  the  study  of  good  litera- 
ture as  a  preparation  for  life,  it  is  because  good  literature 
pictures  man  as  he  is,  and  often  as  he  ought  to  be.  And 
the  more  our  literature  pictures  man  and  woman  as  he  or 
she  ought  to  be,  without  failing  to  be  true  to  nature,  the 
better  it  will  be  for  us.  If  I  have  seemed  to  be  too  severe 
on  a  certain  class  of  novels,  I  do  not  wish  it  to  be  under- 
stood that  I  am  a  Puritan,  disdaining  and  contemning  all 
novels  because  they  are  novels.  I  would  have  you  dis- 
criminate carefully.  A  good  novel  is  a  gift  of  God ;  a  bad 
one  was  perhaps  one  of  the  most  insidious  gifts  that 
Mephistopheles, — who,  you  know,  was  the  devil, — offered 
Dr.  Faust  when  he  wanted  his  soul.  Women  are  the 
most  influential  people  on  the  earth,  while  they  remain 
womanly.  And  on  you,  young  ladies,  will  depend  the 
success  in  life  of  many  in  the  circle  around  you.  By  suc- 
cess I  mean  the  good  that  comes  from  virtuous  living. 
In  our  time,  perhaps  more  than  in  any  other,  true  success 
in  life  depends  on  honor  and  honesty,  purity  of  intention 
and  energy  of  action.  These  may  all  be  sapped  by  a 
course  of  bad  reading.  It  remains  for  you  to  acquire  and 
to  set  up  a  true  standard  of  taste. 


LITERATURE  AND   MAXXERS.  165 

Thackeray,  whom  some  of  you  ladies  call  a  cynic,  had  a 
great  opinion  of  your  prowess ;  he  insists  that  you  can  do 
anything  you  make  up  your  mind  to  do.  "  Let  us  be 
thankful,"  he  cries,  "  that  the  fair  sex  does  not  know  its 
own  power ;  if  it  did,  there  would  not  be  a  bachelor  in  the 
world!"  These  are  not  his  exact  words?  but  they  con- 
tain the  substance  of  what  he  said, — which  is  a  tribute  to 
the  power  of  the  ladies,  and  an  indication  of  the  vanity 
of  the  men, — both  equally  colossal. 

The  novel  is  the  literary  expression  of  our  time,  just  as 
the  drama  was  of  the  time  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  or  the 
satire  that  of  the  time  of  Queen  Anne.  It  is  remarkable 
that  the  three  greatest  periods  of  literary  activity  in  Eng- 
lish literature  should  be  in  the  reigns  of  three  women, — 
Queen  Elizabeth,  Queen  Anne,  and  Queen  Victoria. 
Perhaps  American  literature  may  not  obtain  its  full  growth 
until  we  shall  have  a  Presidentess. 

Miss  Austen,  in  "Northanger  Abbey,"  expresses  my 
opinion  of  a  good  novel.  She  says  that,  in  her  time,  the 
young  lady  was  ashamed  to  be  seen  reading  a  novel,  even 
when  it  was  a  good  one.  "Although,"  she  writes,  speak- 
ing as  a  novelist,  "our  productions  have  afforded  more 
extensive  and  unaffected  pleasure  than  those  of  any  other 
literary  composition  in  the  world,  no  species  of  composi- 
tion has  been  so  much  decried.  From  pride,  ignorance,  or 
fashion,  our  foes  are  almost  as  many  as  our  readers ;  and 
while  the  abilities  of  the  nine-hundredth  abridger  of  the 
History  of  England,  or  of  the  man  who  collects  and  pub- 
lishes in  a  volume  some  dozen  lines  of  Milton,  Pope,  or 


166  LITERATURE   AND  MAXNERS. 

Prior,  with  a  paper  from"  the  Spectator  and  a  chapter 
from  Sterne,  are  eulogized  by  a  thousand  pens, — there 
seems  almost  a  general  wish  to  decry  the  capacity  and 
undervalue  the  labor  of  the  novelist,  and  to  slight  the 
performances  which  have  only  genius,  wit,  and  taste  to 
recommend  them.  "A  good  novel "  is  "  only  some  work 
in  which  the  greatest  powers  of  the  mind  are  displayed,  in 
which  the  most  thorough  knowledge  of  human  nature,  the 
happiest  delineations  of  its  varieties,  the  liveliest  effusions 
of  wit  and  humor,  are  conveyed  to  the  world  in  the  best 
chosen  language." 

I  wish,  from  my  heart,  that  our  young  ladies  were 
ashamed  to  be  seen  always  reading  novels.  They  have 
changed  since  Miss  Austen's  time.  But  there  are  many 
who  devote  the  greater  part  of  their  time  of  leisure  to  the 
pursuance  of  study  even  after  they  leave  school.  And 
the  love  of  study  is  growing  in  our  country,  in  spite  of 
many  obstacles;  it  is  not  fashionable  to  be  ignorant,  and, 
though  the  novel  is  a  literary  power,  morality  and  taste 
have  not  suffered  so  much  from  it  as  they  have  in  France, 
Italy,  and  even  in  Spain.  It  is  your  duty  in  life,  as  mem- 
bers of  the  ruling  sex,  to  see  that  they  do  not  suffer.  With 
that  duty  in  view,  let  us  consider  the  novel  as  a  mirror  of 
manners ;  for  manners  are  the  best  indication  of  morality 
and  taste. 

Let  us  take  one  of  the  fashionable  novelists  of  a  cer- 
tain class,  and  observe  how  she, — the  Duchess,  Bertha 
M.  Clay,  Ouida,  and  their  few  American  imitators  — 
constructs  her  novel,  and  let  us  see  whether  she  takes 


LITERATURE   A.YD   MAA7.\'ERS.  16.7 

the  manners  of  her  characters  from  real  life.  Now. 
when  one  reads  a  novel  at  all,  one  ought  to  read  a 
good  one.  A  good  novel  should  be  elevating,  it  should 
be  natural,  clear  in  style,  true  to  the  time  in  which  its 
scene  is  laid,  and  it  should  be,  if  possible,  a  reflection  of 
good  manners.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  every  person 
in  a  novel  should  always  be  in  a  state  of  awful  and  con- 
gealed perfection  of  manners,  but  I  mean  that  the  people 
should  act  as  ladies  and  gentlemen  when  they  are  repre- 
sented to  be  ladies  and  gentlemen.  And,  if  bad  manners 
are  introduced,  they  should  be  contrasted  with  good.  Sir 
Walter  Scott  and  Dickens  and  Thackeray  draw  the  man- 
ners of  their  characters  from  real  life, — Thackeray  more 
than  the  other  two.  Good  and  bad  are  always  good  and 
bad,  both  in  morals  and  in  manners,  in  the  books  of  these 
authors.  You  cannot,  through  their  fault,  mistake  one 
for  the  other. 

But  I  open  a  book  by  one  of  those  "  lady  novelists/' 
"  who  never  would  be  missed."  I  find  that  the  name  of 
her  heroine  is  Diane. — not  Diana,  but  Diane, — a  "  pansy- 
eyed  creature  in  whose  flossy -golden  curls,  caught  rebel - 
liously  after  the  manner  of  the  love-lorn  Psyche  at  the 
hack  of  her  head,  the  light  of  a  summer's  sunset  seemed 
ever  willing  to  rest."  I  skip  all  this.  I  want  to  see  what 
kind  of  manners  this  lovely  young  thing  has.  I  am  intro- 
duced to  her  at  five  o'clock  tea  in  the  drawing-room  of  a 
Duchess, — for,  of  course.  Diane  is  English, — and  what 
does  she  do  first  ?  "  She  cranes  her  swan-like  neck  and 
with  a  haughty  movement  hands  Algernon  Chichester  a 


168  LITERATURE  AXD  MANNERS. 

cup  of  amber-hued  tea."  I  may  be  ignorant  of  the  usages 
of  good  society,  but  I  confess, — mea  culpa! — that  I  have 
never  seen  anybody  "  crane  a  swan-like  neck."  It  would 
be  a  kindness  if  any  young  lady  would  show  me  how  it  is 
done.  If  there  is  any  young  lady  here  who  can  crane  her 
"  swan-like  neck/and  offer  a  cup  of  tea  with  a  haughty 
movement,"  will  she  please  stand  up  ?  There,  I  thought 
so, — if  you  cannot  do  it,  nobody  can. 

A  friend  has  sent  me  Miss  Rives'  last  novel,  "A  Witness 
of  the  Sun."  If  you  like  stupidity  and  nonsense,  you  can 
read  it;  it  is  too  silly  to  do  anybody  harm.  This  is  the 
first  description  I  find.  It  is  of  a  girl  of  ten, — "her  hair 
of  a  pale  silverish  gold,  suggestive  of  moonlight  through 
amber,  grew  in  five  well-defined  points  above  her  noble 
low  brow.  Her  skin  had  the  clear  whiteness  of  almonds 
which  had  been  soaked  in  water.  Her  eyes,  large  and 
lustrous,  were  the  tint  of  a  spring  rain-cloud, — that  inde- 
scribable, bluish  gray-violet  which  seems  to  make  blue 
cold  by  contrast,  gray  harsh,  and  violet  sentimental."  At 
the  age  of  seventeen,  this  paragon  meets  a  young  man 
with  the  "  thin,  curled  lips  which,  when  not  cruel,  are  so 
beautiful.11  She  talks ;  and  one  of  the  next  things  we  learn 
about  her  is  that  "  she  had  one  of  those  full,  lissome 
mouths  which  adapt  themselves  exquisitely  to  a  smile." 
When  I  read  that, —  I  hope  you  will  pardon  me  for  the 
shocking  vulgarity  of  the  thought — I  recalled  a  contempt-- 
nous  phrase  much  used  by  the  small  boy  at  school, — 
"  What  a  mouth  for  pie!  "  To  go  on.  "  Her  whole  face 
changed  with  a  smile  as  water  under  a  float  of  sunlight. 


LITERATURE   AND   MA.\\\'E£S.  169 

The  contour  became  more  childish,  and  yet  somehow  her 
expression  was  more  that  of  a  woman."  Later,  we  find 
somebody  else  extending  her  hand, — "  one  of  those  beauti- 
ful hands  whose  palms  look  like  crumpled  pink  tissue- 
paper,  and  yet  which  have  the  strength  of  machinery." 
Now  is  not  all  this  in  bad  taste  ?  Is  it  not  absurdly  ex- 
aggerated ?  Is  it  good  manners  to  be  continually  making 
remarks  about  anybody's  appearance  in  this  serious  and 
admiring  manner?  Fancy  Dickens  or  Thackeray  sitting 
through  three  volumes  in  open-mouthed,  idiotic  admira- 
tion for  his  heroines!  This  constant  iteration  of  descrip- 
tion of  the  heroine's  attitudes  and  her  clothes  is  one  of 
the  most  vulgar  breaches  of  good  manners  in  novels. 

The  novel  devoted  particularly  to  manners  is  an  insti- 
tution; here  is  one  by  another  lady.  Mark  its  taste.  The 
hero  is  of  "  Herculean  build,"  his  waist  is  "  small,"  his 
shoulders  so  broad  that  they  could  have  borne  the  weight 
of  Atlas,  his  hands,  "  lion-like  in  strength,"  are  white  and 
small,  his  mustache  is  "  tinted  with  amber-like  reflections," 
his  dark  eyes  have  a  fathomless  look.  The  heroine,  who 
is  a  vicar's  daughter, — everything  is  intensely  English  in 
the  novel,  though  it  is  the  work  of  an  American, — goes 
out  on  a  stormy  night  to  warn  the  police  that  a  murder  is 
about  to  be  committed.  It  is  raining  and  hailing;  but, 
says  the  author,  "she  trailed  her  sumptuous  satin  dress 
through  the  streets,  as  Cleopatra  might  have  done  in  some 
old  Egyptian  night  of  Cimmerian  darkness,  and  the  wild 
wind  swept  her  golden  tresses  down  on  her  bare  neck  and 
shoulders,  white  as  the  fairest  Italian  marble." 


170  LITERATURE  AND  MANNERS. 

Now  is  it  natural  that  a  well-brought-up  young  woman 
should  rush  out  into  the  streets  at  night  in  search  of  a 
policeman  ?  The  novelist  has  evidently  done  that  only 
to  make  a  picture ;  she  does  not  care  for  naturalness.  But 
of  course  it  is  all  very  absurd.  And  yet  some  people  read 
it  quite  seriously,  and  in  future  times  an  innocent  his- 
torian may  take  that  lurid  glimpse  of  a  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury young  woman  as  an  example  of  the  manner  in  which 
you  conduct  yourselves  in  this  year  of  grace. 

To  find  a  real  gem  of  the  novelist's  attention  to  modern 
manners,  I  dipped  into  a  book  by  Joaquin  Miller.  It  is 
all  about  a  lady  who  always  dressed  in  pink:  she  was  a 
beautiful  creature,  and  she  had  such  charming  manners. 
For  instance,  she  went  into  the  great  church  of  St.  Peter's 
at  Rome.  The  organ  played,  and  it  occurred  to  her  that, 
as  there  were  no  pews,  a  little  dance  was  the  proper  thing. 
And  so  to  the  dreamy  sound  of  exquisite  music,  she  floated 
beneath  the  stately  dome.  Everybody  admired  her;  sev- 
eral priests  came  to  remonstrate  with  her,  but  they  were 
so  entranced  by  her  grace  that  they  remained  to  watch 
her.  This  is  a  true  picture  of  what  an  American  girl 
would  be  likely  to  do  in  Rome,  of  course !  And  yet  the 
manners  of  this  person  in  pink  are  supposed  to  be  painted 
from  real  life. 

There  is  one  phase  of  life  sometimes  touched  on  in 
novels  of  which  you  ought  to  be  particularly  competent 
to  judge.  You  may  not  know  much  about  "society"  as 
yet,— and -I  hope  you  may  never  know  much  about  that 
world  of  dissipation,  hypocrisy,  and  feverish  amusement 


LITERATURE  AND  MANNERS.  171 

to-day  called  "  society,"  —  but  you  know  something  of 
the  manners  of  the  convent  school.  Now  there  is  a  novel 
by  Admiral  Porter,  of  the  American  Navy,  in  which  the 
manners  and  custom  of  a  convent  are  described.  The 
heroine  of  this  volume  is  called  Louise  Morton,  the  beau- 
tiful Austrian.  She  sails  the  seas  in  company  with  a  pirate, 
of  whom  she  says,  after  he  has  committed  several  atrocious 
murders, — "  This  is  a  being  worthy  of  my  love."  Later, 
when  an  unfortunate  sea  captain  is  made  to  walk  the 
plank,  this  lovely  creature  "saw  it  all,  and  looked  on, 
dismayed  at  the  horrid  spectacle.  Give  me  champagne," 
she  cried,  "  I  would  forget  this  scene,  if  I  could,  I  am  not 
yet  steeped  enough  in  crime."  Still  later,  the  amiable 
pirate  tells  "  the  beautiful  Austrian  "  that  he  has  forged 
notes,  broken  his  mother's  heart,  and  committed  "  unheard 
of  atrocities."  To  which  the  sweet  creature  replies, 
"Oh,  mere  juvenile  delinquencies!" 

These  passages  are  quoted,  not  to  show  the  manners 
of  pirates  and  piratesses ;  but  merely  to  show  what  Ad  - 
miral  Porter's  idea  of  preparation  for  life  in  a  con- 
vent is. 

This  Louise  Mortonjries  to  kill  the  pirate  chief.  Then, 
growing  weary  of  "  life  on  the  ocean  wave,"  she  enters 
the  convent  of  the  Sisters  of  the  Sacred  Cross,  "on  the 
Bloomingdale  Road,"  in  New  York,  although  there  was 
no  convent  in  New  York  at  the  time  (1820).  This  shrink- 
ing creature,  who  had  acquired  a  taste  for  drinking  cham- 
pagne and  assisting  at  murders,  stayed  in  the  convent  two 
weeks.  At  the  end  of  that  time,  she  was  received  into 


172  LITERATURE  AND  MANNERS. 

the  community,  and  became  one  of  the  most  devout  sisters 
in  the  convent! 

The  author  of  this  novel "  taken  from  authentic  sources  " 
did  not  know  that  a  stranger  without  proper  credentials, 
without  her  certificate  of  baptism  and  confirmation,  testi- 
mony as  to  her  good  character,  and  a  shown  record  of  her 
whole  previous  life,  could  not  be  admitted  into  any  con- 
vent under  the  jurisdiction  of  Catholic  authority.  The 
time  for  the  postulantship  and  the  novitiate  is  regulated  in 
all  religious  congregations  so  strictly  that  the  absence  of 
a  day  from  the  required  term  of  years,  would  invalidate 
the  worth  of  the  requisite  time  of  preparation. 

Nevertheless,  Admiral  Porter  goes  on.  "  In  less  than 
a  year,"  he  says,  "the  Lady  Superior  dies.  Sister  Imo- 
gene,  whose  touch  on  the  piano  was  perfect,"  was  "  ap- 
pointed by  the  Church  authorities  to  the  vacant  place." 
She  immediately  sold  her  diamond  ring — worth  ten  thou- 
sand dollars — and  gave  the  proceeds  to  the  conyent.  The 
Admiral's  convent  has  stone  floors.  But  there  is  no  con- 
vent in  this  country  with  such  an  expensive  luxury  as  stone 
floors.  Another  revelation  of  convent  manners  and  cus- 
toms is  the  description  of  the  white  veil  the  new  Mother 
Superior  always  wore  at  table,  and  in  the  presence  of  the 
other  Sisters.  The  Mother  Superior — who,  by  the  way, 
was  not  yet  twenty-eight  years  of  age — always  wore  a 
little  silver  bottle,  supposed  to  contain  smelling  salts, 
attached  to  her  rosary.  One  day  some  former  acquaint- 
ances enter  the  convent.  One  of  them  calls  her  a  "  mur- 
.deress."  And,  after  some  similar  phrases,  supposed  to  be 


LITERATURE  AXD  MAX. \~ERS.  173 

generally  used  in  convents,  the  smelling  bottle,  which  con- 
tained poison,  was  raised  to  her  lips.  "  She  fell  to  the 
floor,  writhing  in  agony,  and  in  a  few  moments  was  a  life- 
less corpse." 

Permit  me  to  ask,  can  this  be  taken  as  a  true  picture  of 
novels?  Do  the  good  Sisters  among  whom  you  have  the 
happiness  to  live,  walk  mournfully  with  "  baleful  eyes  on 
damp  stone  floors,"  and  carry  smelling  bottles  full  of 
poison  ?  If  they  do,  we  shall  be  compelled  to  admit  that 
the  ordinary  novel  gives  us  true  pictures  of  the  morals, 
manners,  and  customs  of  real  life. 

Pardon  me  if  I  make  one  or  two  more  extracts  from  a 
heap  of  what  is  called  "reading  matter,"  but  which  can- 
not be  called  literature.  It  is  a  story  written  by  a  writer 
unknown  to  fame,  whose  books  are  occasionally  sold  in 
the  railway  trains.  This  "  Story  of  an  Actress  "  was  thrown 
at  me  one  day  by  a  news-boy,  who  had  acquired  the  art 
of  dropping  such  books  on  passengers  without  hurting 
them  very  much.  The  scene  is  laid  behind  the  scenes  in 
a  theatre.  The  heroine's  name  is  Marion.  She  is  a  far- 
mer's daughter.  She  recites,  and  one  day  as  she  is  engaged 
on  a  pile  of  "  aromatic  hay,  whose  exquisite  tint  made  a 
delightful  harmony  with  the  curling  locks  upon  her  brow" 
in  reciting  the  balcony  scene  from  "  Romeo  and  Juliet," 
she  hears  a  footstep.  She  pauses ;  no  sound.  She  then 
goes  on  to  speak  "Spartacus  to  the  Gladiators."  The 
novelist  tells  us  that  her  voice  "thrilled  in  impassioned 
cadences  which  filled  the  ancient  barn  with  wondrous 
echoes,  as  if  Mrs.  Siddons  or  some  great  lost  star  of  the 


174  LITERATURE  AND  MANNERS. 

theatrical  firmament  had  come  to  earth  again."  Another 
footstep  interrupts  her.  She  is  startled;  she  shrieks:  she 
falls  almost  unconscious  from  the  hay,  to  be  picked  up 
by  a  gray-haired  stranger;  he  is  a  theatrical  manager;  he 
says,  "  Girl,  'tis  long  since  I  heard  the  expression  of 
genius  like  thine.  Come  to  the  great  city.  Soon  you 
shall  receive  a  princely  salary:  the  world  will  shower  plau- 
dits upon  you." 

Marion's  father  and  mother  are  delighted  when  their 
daughter  tells  them  of  the  stranger's  words.  She  starts 
off  with  him  at  once.  "  Go,  my  child,"  the  old  man  says, 
"and  return  with  the  laurel  wreath  of  genius  on  your 
brow."  Marion  goes,  carrying  her  modest  valise  in  her 
hand.  Reaching  the  great  city,  she  finds  herself  suddenly 
in  a  crowd  of  anarchists  who  are  about  to  hang  an  inoffen- 
sive man  to  a  lamp-post.  The  gaslight  shines  on  her  face 
and  the  Anarchists  are  "  struck  by  its  rare  beauty."  She 
stands  up  in  her  carriage.  "Are  ye  men?"  she  asks, 
and  then  in  .impassioned  tones  she  begins  the  speech  of 
Mark  Antony  over  the  body  of  Ccesar.  The  anarchists 
are  charmed.  They  demand  "  Shamus  O'Brien.''  She 
repeats  it  with  "  pathos  that  strikes  the  stagnant  air  like 
the  quick  heart-throbs  of  some  heroic  warrior."  The  mob 
release  their  prisoner  and  carry  her  in  triumph  to  her 
hotel.  A  few  nights  afterward,  she  makes  her  entrance 
on  the  stage  as  Juliet.  The  town  is  at  her  feet.  She 
receives  a  fabulous  sum  of  money  and  is  hailed  at  once 
as  a  great  actress.  The  man  rescued  from  the  anarchists 
turns  out  to  be  her  long-lost  brother  and  the  novel  ends. 


LITERATURE  AND   MAX. \~ERS.  175 

just  as  of  course  it  would  end  in  real  life,  by  the  marriage 
of  the  farmer's  daughter  to  an  English  Duke! 

This  is  all  false,  as  we  know.  Such  things  could  not 
occur  in  life.  A  young  girl  who  starts  out  to  be  an  actress 
takes  the  thorniest  path,  leading  to  the  most  dangerous 
road  in  all  creation.  Theatrical  managers  would  flee 
from  young  ladies  who  are  heard  reciting  "  Spartacus,"  as 
most  sensible  people  would.  Anarchists,  if  we  can  judge 
by  the  newspapers,  are  not  so  easily  impressed.  There  is 
no  drudgery  so  intense,  so  unremitting,  as  the  drudgery 
of  the  theatre :  no  drudgery  so  poorly  paid,  no  life  so 
dangerous  to  all  the  womanly  virtues.  In  the  first  place. 
if  Marion  had  managed  to  get  the  chance  of  acting  a 
small  part,  she  would  probably  have  been  so  shocked  by 
the  freedom  of  manners  of  the  people  on  the  stage  at  re- 
hearsal, that  she  would  have  gone  back  to  her  farm,  glad 
to  give  up  all  thoughts  of  the  laurels  of  genius,  remember- 
ing how  the  manager  swore  at  her  awkwardness  and  how 
he  called  her  outrageous  names,  with  a  shudder.  It  is  a  pity 
that  such  views  of  life — so  false  and  misleading — should 
be  set  before  the  inexperienced.  The  best  safeguard 
against  them  is  the  cultivation  of  good  taste  in  literature. 
It  will  supply  the  place  of  experience.  The  mind  accus- 
tomed to  the  great  classics  of  literature  cannot  endure 
the  cheap  trash  of  the  railway  train  or  the  news-stand. 

In  speaking  of  the  morals  and  manners  of  the  novel, 
I  have  almost  omitted  to  speak  of  the  pivotal  subject  of 
most  of  them — of  all  of  them,  in  fact — love.  And  on 
no  subject  does  the  majority  of  novels  give  more  delusive 


lj6  LITERATURE  AXD  MAXXERS. 

views.  Thackeray  and  Dickens  are  robust  and  honest 
and  practical  in  their  treatment  of  this  theme.  Thack- 
eray, who  drew  his  pictures  from  real  life  and  taught  a 
lesson  by  each  picture,  does  not  pretend  that  love  is  the 
main  motive,  and  marriage  the  great  end  to  living. 
Madame  Swetchine  says  of  novels,  "  They  generally  end 
with  a  marriage,  like  a  comedy;  whereas,  marriage  is  only 
the  beginning  of  life."  In  Thackeray's  "  Pendennis,"  in 
"  The  Newcomes,"  in  "  The  Virginians  "  — a  novel  which 
has  special  interest  for  us,  now  that  we  are  celebrating  the 
anniversary  of  Washington's  inauguration, — sentimental 
love  is  not  the  principal  theme,  nor  is  it  in  Sir  Walter 
Scott's,  nor  in  the  best  of  Dickens'.  But  it  is  in  a  vast 
swarm  of  novels  which,  like  the  Egyptian  locusts,  devour 
every  green  thing.  They  turn  the  young  in  heart  old  be- 
fore their  time.  They  raise  delusive  hopes  which  sink  in 
disappointment.  If  the  sentimental  novel  could  be  sup- 
pressed, there  would  be  much  less  misery  in  the  world. 
Our  young  people  ought  to  read,  of  course,  but  with  dis- 
crimination. Novels,  like  dancing,  ought  to  be  indulged 
seldom.  St.  Francis  de  Sales,  you  remember,  compares 
dancing  to  mushrooms,  of  which,  it  seems,  the  saint  was 
not  particularly  fond.  "The  rest  of  dances  are  worth- 
less," he  says,  "  but,  if,  like  mushrooms,  you  will  have 
them,  have  them  but  seldom." 

And  who,  having  seen  the  "  society  girl " — odious  phrase  1 
—exhausted,  worn,  useless,  discontented  after  a  winter  of 
cotillions  and  late  hours,  can  fail  to  agree  with  the  saint? 
If  some  novelist  would  tell  us  the  truth,  and  write  out 


LITERATURE  AND   MAXNEKS.  l^^ 

what  the  partners  of  this  dissatisfied  and  unhappy  young 
lady  have  said  of  her  as  she  whirled  around  with  them 
night  after  night,  I  think  that  she  would  heartily  agree 
that  promiscuous  and  constant  dancing  is  an  evil  to  be 
detested. 

Similarly,  constant  novel-reading,  even  when  the  novels 
are  good,  is  bad  for  every  faculty.  No  one  who  ex- 
pects to  do  good  mental  work  can  subsist  chiefly  on 
novels.  Ices  and  bon-bons  have  their  place,  but  even 
the  most  delicate  of  young  ladies  need  bread  and  butter 
and  roast  beef.  Too  much  reading  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  or 
Dickens  or  Thackeray,  good  and  stimulating  as  they  are, 
will  not  do.  History  and  biography,  poetry  and  art  should 
have  their  place  in  each  month's  leisure,  set  apart  for 
reading.  If  it  be  a  question  between  sitting  over  a  novel, 
or  having  a  game  of  tennis  or  base-ball,  let  us  choose  the 
latter.  There  is  more  good  to  be  had  even  in  the  dan- 
gerous part  of  umpire  than  by  breathlessly  trying  to  find 
out  whether  Amaryllis  So-and-So  will  marry  Tom,  Dick, 
or  Harry  at  the  end  of  the  book. 

But  to  return  to  the  subject  of  love.  The  novelists  who 
write  without  reason,  generally  represent  two*  people  as 
meeting  suddenly.  They  are  both  handsome;  that  is 
enough;  they  were  made  for  each  other.  The  plot 
thickens.  Sensible  parents  oppose,  experienced  people 
warn  them  that  they  are  fools.  The  reader  hates  the 
parents,  and  the  experienced  people.  The  heroine  and 
hero  are  both  poor.  He  has  a  rich  but  honest  uncle,  who 
may  leave  him  some  money;  consequently,  he  has  never 

12 


178  LITERATURE  AXD   MANNERS. 

learned  to  work.  Why  should  he  ?  His  business  in  the 
novel  is  to  love.  She  has  never  learned  to  darn  stockings, 
or  wash  dishes,  or  tell  chicken  from  turkey.  Why  should 
she  ?  Her  business  is  to  look  beautiful.  There  is  talk  of 
love  in  a  cottage,  and  roses,  and  woodbines.  But  there 
is  no  mention  of  who  is  to  pay  the  rent  and  the  bills  for 
quinine — love  in  a  cottage  usually  means  malaria — or 
whether  he  has  a  knack  of  splitting  wood  or  whether  she 
has  a  good  temper.  Now,  without  these  two  requisites 
love  in  a  cottage  is  impossible.  Let  the  admirer  of  the 
sentimental  novel  lay  this  axiom  to  heart. 

The  novice  who  would  take  his  opinions  of  the  way  in 
which  people  act  in  good  society  from  the  popular  novel, 
and  try  to  act  on  them,  would  speedily  be  an  object  of 
very  unflattering  attention.  For  instance,  in  one  of  the 
late  ones,  it  is  written,  "  Novirine  helped  himself  to  a 
slice  of  ham  with  a  grand  air."  There  is  no  mention  of  a 
fork.  He  used  a  grand  air.  Or,  "  Una  sailed  into  the 
dining-room  in  her  stately  way  just  as  the  roast  was  served, 
deigning  no  apology  for  her  long  absence  in  the  conserva- 
tory." If  Una  tried  that  in  real  life,  I  fancy  her  hostess 
would  nevet  invite  her  to  dinner  again. 

We  do  not  find  these  absurdities  in  the  work  of  the  four 
truly  great  English  novelists,  which  works  ought  to  be 
the  only  novels  read.  If  one  wants  to  find  a  charming 
picture,  and  a  true  one,  of  a  Sister  in  a  convent,  there  is 
Kathleen  O'Meara's  "Narka."  If  one  wants  to  find  how 
an  actress  lives,  there  is  Miss  Fotheringay  in  Thackeray's 
"  Pendennis."  There  is  no  nonsense  about  that  young 


LIl^ERATURE   AND   MANNERS.  179 

woman  who,  on  tne  stage,  is  "  Miss  Fotheringay,"  and  at 
home  Miss  Costigan.  She  makes  pie  and  mends  her 
clothes,  and  works  hard  enough  before  she  goes  on  the 
stage  as  Ophelia,  or  Juliet.  There  is  another  picture  of 
the  stage  in  Dickens'  "  Nicholas  Nickleby."  The  Crum- 
mies are  inimitable.  The  struggles  of  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Crummies  and  the  Infant  Phenomenon  for  theatrical  suc- 
cess are  truer  to  life  than  the  story  of  Marion  and  the 
anarchist.  The  life  of  the  Crummies  was  a  miserable, 
sordid,  feverish  life,  and  even  Dickens'  humor  cannot  con- 
ceal the  gloom  of  it.  The  theatre  is  still  the  theatre  of 
the  Crummies,  in  spite  of  the  exaggerations  that  less  true 
artists  than  Dickens  gave  to  the  pictures  of  life  behind  the 
scenes.  We  find  it  described  in  "  Nicholas  Nickleby." 

"  It  was  not  very  light,  but  Nicholas  found  himself  close 
to  the  first  entrance  on  the  prompt  side,  among  bare  walls^ 
dusty  scenes,  mildewed  clouds,  heavily  daubed  draperies, 
and  dirty  floors.  He  looked  about  him :  ceiling,  pit,  boxes, 
gallery,  orchestra,  fittings,  and  decorations  of  every  kind, 
— all  looked  coarse,  cold,  gloomy,  and  wretched. 

"  '  Is  this  a  theatre  ?  '  whispered  Smike,  in  amazement. 
'  I  thought  it  was  a  blaze  of  light  and  finery.' 

"  '  Why,  so  it  is.'  replied  Nicholas,  hardly  less  surprised ; 
'  but  not  by  day,  Smike ; — not  by  day.'  " 

Nicholas,  you  remember,  translates  a  play  for  Mr. 
Crummies'  troupe,  who,  as  actors  do  in  real  life,  look  on 
the  thrilling  situations  as  matters  of  pure  business.  Speak- 
ing to  Mr.  Lenville,  one  of  the  leading  actors,  Nicholas 
says,— 


i So  LITERATURE   AND  MANNERS. 

"  '  You  turn  your  wife  and  child  out  of  doors ;  and  in  a 
fit  of  rage  and  jealousy,  stab  your  eldest  son  in  the  library.' 

"  '  Do  I,  though?  '  exclaimed  Mr.  Lenville ;  '  that's  very 
good  business. ' 

"  'After  which,'  said  Nicholas  '  you  are  troubled  with 
remorse  until  the  last  act,  and  then  you  make  up  your 
mind  to  destroy  yourself.  But  just  as  you  are  raising  a 
pistol  to  your  head,  a  clock  strikes — ten.' 

"  '  I  see,'  cried  Mr.  Lenville,  '  very  good.' 

"  '  You  pause,'  said  Nicholas,  '  you  recollect  to  have 
heard  a  clock  strike  ten  in  your  infancy.  The  pistol  falls 
from  your  hand — you  are  overcome — you  burst  into  tears, 
and  become  a  virtuous  and  exemplary  character  forever 
afterwards/ 

"'Capital!'  said  Mr.  Lenville,  'that's  a  sure  card,  a 
sure  card.' " 

The  hard-working  actresses  in  "  Nicholas  Nickleby  "  and 
Miss  Fotheringay,  doing  house  work  by  day  and  acting 
at  night,  are  nearer  to  the  truth  than  the  imaginative  pic- 
tures Of  life  on  the  stage  given  by  the  third-rate  story- 
writers.  There  is  little  romance  about  the  life  of  an  actor, 
— and  God  help  the  girl  who  becomes  an  actress.  There 
is  only  one  Mary  Anderson  and  she,  with  all  her  talent, 
has  worked  herself  to  death.  Before  she  gained  recog- 
nition at  all,  she  had  studied  day  and  night  for  many  years 
and  spent  twenty  thousand  dollars.  It  was  not  by  recit- 
ing "  Spartacus "  that  she  stepped  into  a  most  arduous 
and  dangerous  profession. 

Even  in  the  reading  of  the  works  of  the  three  greatest 


LITER  A  TURK   A. YD   MAXXEJtS.  181 

English  novel-writers,  there  must  be  discrimination.  Al- 
though Thackeray  points  a  moral  in  every  character,  it  is 
well  in  beginning  his  books  to  take  direction  as  to  which 
is  most  suitable  for  us.  But  one  gets  no  false  views  of 
life  from  him.  He  has  one  grave  fault,  and  this  is  that 
he  writes  as  if  a  man  could  be  good  of  himself;  he  makes 
his  characters  act  from  natural  goodness,  never  from 
supernatural.  In  his  Becky  Sharp,  that  famous  personage 
in  "  Vanity  Fair  "  who  resolves  to  gain  her  ends  by  selfish- 
ness and  intrigue,  we  have  a  terrible  example  of  how  vain 
human  effort  is,  even  in  this  world  where  the  heart  is  hollow 
and  the  mind  corrupt.  In  Blanche  Amory,  in  the  same 
book,  we  are  made  to  detest  the  heartless  creature  who 
tortures  the  helpless,  who  is  impertinent  and  cruel  in  her 
family,  but  who  in  public  weeps  sentimental  tears  and 
pretends  to  be  an  angel  of  compassion :  in  Major  Pen- 
dennis  and  in  Baroness  Bernstein  the  decay  of  selfish 
lives.  Thackeray  never  leads  his  readers  to  confound 
right  with  wrong.  If  he  seems  unrelenting,  it  is  only  to 
the  utterly  bad;  he  is  always  tender  to  the  good,  and 
he  never  fails  to  point  out  that  the  only  thing  in  life, 
worth  life  itself,  is  a  good  conscience.  His  ladies  and 
gentlemen  have  natural  manners.  Ethel  Newcome  never 
"cranes  her  neck,"  or  "throws  herself,  with  a  spasmodic 
sob,  at  the  feet  of  anybody,"  and  Philip  Warrington  never 
takes  his  tea  "  with  a  grand  air  of  utter  disdain."  And 
where  can  we  find  a  more  upright,  true  and  natural  gentle  • 
man  than  Thackeray  paints  George  Washington  to  be? 
A  reader  of  light  novels  may  find  it  difficult  to  acquire 


1 82  LITERATURE   AND    WAXNERS. 

a  taste  for  Thackeray.  It  requires  good  taste  to  appre- 
ciate the  marvellous  art  shown  in  every  line  of  "  Henry 
Esmond."  It  is  worth  taking  pains  to  reach  to  that 
taste.  Once  gained,  it  is  gained  forever.  Once  gained, 
the  meretricious  in  literature  is  easily  discovered  by  the 
sense  so  refined. 

Dickens  has  not  Thackeray's  almost  perfect  style.  His 
personages  are  often  grotesque  and  sometimes, — I  must 
admit, — a  little  vulgar, — sometimes,  too,  strained  and 
artificial.  But,  like  Manzoni's  great  novel,  "  The  Betroth- 
ed," " Nicholas  Nickleby "  and  "  Bleak  House"  and  "A 
Tale  of  Two  Cities  "  and  "  Barnaby  Rudge  "  will  remain 
joys  forever  to  the  healthy  and  cultivated  mind. 

We  may  not  agree  as  to  the  death  of  little  Nell ;  it  may 
be  overstrained  and  long  drawn  out ;  it  may  not  have  the 
manly  pathos  of  the  chapter  in  Thackeray's  "  Newcomes  " 
where  the  Colonel  cries  "Adsum ;"  but  the  dying  child 
and  her  canary  have  drawn  tears  from  thousands  of  eyes 
which,  since  it  was  written,  have  themselves  closed  in 
death. 

Say  that  Thackeray  is  cynical  and  Dickens  grotesque, 
if  you  will ;  but  you  can  say  no  worse.  They  touch  the 
heart;  they  do  not  allure  the  senses;  if  they  make  us 
laugh,  it  is  an  honest  laugh ;  if  they  draw  tears  to  our 
eyes,  it  is  because  of  the  sufferings  of  beings  of  high  pur- 
pose ;  they  do  not  deceive  the  young  by  pointing  to  the 
prismatic  scum  on  the  surface  of  a  stagnant  pool  and  tell- 
ing us  that  it  reflects  the  rainbow.  This  "Ouida"and 
her  followers  do,  to  the  destruction  of  many. 


LITERATURE  AND  MANNERS.  183 

It  rests  with  you,  young  ladies,  to  create  a  purer  taste  in 
the  world  around  you, — to  help  to  kill  the  vicious  and 
vulgar,  the  trifling  and  unnatural  novels  of  the  day.  It 
seems  to  me  that  if  one  has  little  time  to  read,  one  need 
never  go  beyond  the  New  Testament  and  the  Imitation. 
To-day  this  suggestion  seems  too  rigid.  But,  as  you  will 
go  further,  beware  lest  your  taste  be  vitiated  before  you 
know.  The  gaining  of  a  correct  taste  in  literature  will 
enable  you  to  enjoy  high  thoughts  in  others  and  think 
high  thoughts  in  yourself — it  will  be  a  perennial  pleasure 
which  poverty  nor  care  nor  sickness  itself  can  ever  take 
away. 


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